Operation Support Justice

Since Secretary Dick Cheney's staunch Department of Defense letter of September 1989, the military has been actively supporting drug law enforcement agencies at home and abroad. In the U.S. Southern Command area, a series of Operation Support Justice actions have provided continuing military support to U.S. ambassadors' counterdrug efforts and to the host nations' counterdrug infrastructures in order to attack drugs at the source. Forces Command, by way of its continental armies and Joint Task Force 6, has been supporting major marijuana eradication operations, while the state governors' National Guards have been especially active in countering drugs at the growing source. Many of these operations are large-scale efforts involving interagency planning and civil-military cooperation in the execution of complex concepts for operations. Operations such as Green Sweep, Green Merchant, Ghost Dancer, Ghost Zone, Grizzly, Wipeout, Badge, and Blast Furnace, have become highly visible to Americans of both continents, creating some curiosity as well as outright anger at military involvement.