or are war and drugs necessarily intertwined symptoms of a social disease (capitalism)?

At least 350,000 American vets are being treated for substance abuse. This article, “It’s easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan,” argues that a significant number of vets from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are acquiring addictions to heroin. The official military estimates are propagandistically low (0-2%), while expert research on Vietnam vets has shown that about 5% became addicted. Why would the military want to hide these numbers? -> For many reasons… 1) how can you “support the troops” when the troops become drug addicts, and thereby are associated with the types of people who are villified domestically? 2) if the troops image is tarnished in this way, then the friend/enemy distinction breaks down, because the troops are seen as having the enemy within themselves; 3) if we at home identify with the troops, then we would also be inspired to search within ourselves for the source of the world’s problems, rather than blaming and villifying foreign Other as ‘terrorists’… etc.