Amongst others, George Will is wrong. For guaranteed success, we need to occupy all the opium poppy fields. We need to dig extensive livable foxholes in every field. We need to negotiate with every farmer we are purchasing the total crop from the farmers. We are willing to pay the distilled heroin price but we want the opium in its original black milk form. In the event there are users in the house we will allow the farmers enough raw opium for their home use.



The key to solving the terrorist issue is the opium poppy! The poppy funds a dope running religious fanatic organization operating under the name Taliban. The poppy harvest funds all of the operations conducted by al Qaeda.

Government officials throughout the country siphon the proceeds from the poppy, to send their kids to Harvard. 



Monopoly!

93% of the world’s opium, the base for heroin, morphine, and codeine is grown in Afghanistan. The most powerful marijuana, best for neutering the side effects from chemotherapy grows in Afghanistan.

Had Ted Kennedy smoked five Afghani marijuana stogies a day, the canniboids would have traveled his blood stream and physically fought the tumor in his brain. Kennedy would still be with us!
(I digressed).


After the harvest, most of the opium poppy milk, the raw opium is distilled into white powder heroin. The Afghan heroin is smuggled throughout Russia, the eastern Bloc, some to Iran where they grow their own opium for home use, a different strain of poppy that when milked has a reddish look instead of black; plentiful smuggling through out Western Europe, and tons by boat and plane to South America where the heroin is repackaged to appear South American grown.

The Columbian Cartels then ship the heroin to the Mexican Cartels for export sale and distribution in USA.



The heroin manufactured from Afghanistan opium poppy cannot be replaced by the drug dealers overnight! The Afghani’s have a monopoly! They wiped out the competition. Were we to simply purchase their opium crop, year in and year out, and their marijuana crop, for medicinal purposes, their whole country would thrive.

There would be enough money in Afghanistan, in each of the provinces, skipping their imagioned federal government, to create jobs building roads and schools and to live in peace and harmony! This would be a lot more cost effective then engaging in senseless war.



Al Qaeda would be out of business, unable to pay their operatives who would slip away without a guarantee of pay. Al qaeda would not have the money to pay the families of the suicide bombers. The idea of planning a mass murderous attack on USA would be a hashish pipe dream. Dick Cheney would be out of business.



The troops who follow the Afghani warlords would go home. They follow the warlords for food and money. The Taliban would dissolve. They are dope smugglers only pretending to be religious fanatics.

It’s all about the drug smuggling money.



To bring this about, an end to the warring there, making the world a safer place for the innocent everywhere, we need only occupy the opium fields with the understanding we are paying top dollar – the distilled heroin price for the raw opium and then Taliban, the war lords, and al Qaeda won’t have any choice but come out from behind the boulders where they hide by the roadsides, and attack us, attack our dug in troops in the poppy fields.



On the move, with drones we will pick off half before the Taliban and al Qaeda get that far.



The night before the plant milking harvest is to begin, we cut down our poppy! We know from the farmers how many ounces each plant produces. We multiply the opium volume X the number of plants to determine the farmer’s cut.



Then we cut down the poppy two inches above ground, chop up all the plants into mulch, enriching the soil for the next harvest. Liken this to spilling a fat line of coke, tipping a mirror off your knee and dumping the line of powder onto a shag rug.



All the terrorist operations in that part of the world will collapse!
The blood of their enterprize is the opium / heroin and what they get for the drug on the underworld world market. This is beyond the scope of our military bureaucracy.


Recently the Chairman of the joint chiefs was questioned in a televised interview. He was asked what the army was doing about the opium / heroin trade. He said words to the effect they were “targeting” the people “distributing the product.” The “product?!” 

This is the language of a bureaucrat, not a military leader.



The president should ORDER the military to do exactly what ‘eye say.’ Then we win. Without paying homage to conspiracy theorists, the military does not want to defeat these terrorists. Without the terrorist threat, their own power and influence, their bureaucracy is diminished.

President Eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex. The words, “peace,” and ‘harmony” do not appear in their lexicons. The words, “peace”, and “harmony” are absent from their military manuals.



Anyone using these words is considered by the military a domestic enemy, and each branch has a counter intelligence domestic program operating in USA. They investigate inside our country!



The last time i sent a sharply worded letter to noose paper editors all around the country, the f be eye knocked on my back door, waving the email and wanted to come into my house to talk to me. How long before the Fascist Bureaucracy Ink comes knocking on your door? 



michaelslevinson dot commie is a decent place to visit. Just don’t visit from your home computer unless you want to invite an echo in your telephone, indicating you are on j. edgarina’s party line for a couple three-day trials.



j. edgarina, the fascist cross dressing pervert of dirt established policies that are active to this day. Hoover’s domestic counter intelligence minions, the newspaper editors and writers ef be eye sponsored into grad schools and from there, local TV newsrooms and noose papers need to be weeded out. 



The writers sponsored by the ef be eye shill professor jay rosen need to be uncovered. 



An examination of all the noose paper people who got emotional in the noose rooms when discussing weapons of mass destruction need to be looked at – where these editors and writers have close family members who work in the D.C. bureaucracy, like the Pentagon and Sea Eye Yay, which stands for cash In Advance, they need to be relieved of their positions! 

We are better served with policies reflecting the above. Try you tube dot commie forward slash poet prophet.

michaelslevinson.com/newworld.pdf gets you a free copy of “New World Hors D’oeuvres.”

2. Whose interest is it for the war to end? US contractors- No. Afghan politicians- No. Afghan employees of DOD, NGOs, USAID- No. US military- No (but there are limits are how much escalation it wants) CIA- No. Afghan businessmen- No. Tribal leaders- No. Afghan criminals- No. Self declaration: M Shannon- No.

The level of casualties and damage are too low and the cash flow is too high to expect any of the groups that profit from the conflict to be in a hurry to end the war. If civilian casualties continue to drop there will be no push to end this from any quarter.

I think you are both missing an important factor that will make the Afghan military and police build-up and take over of the battle against the Taliban more difficult than you imply by your comments. The illiteracy rate in Afghanistan is very high, and creating a modern, or even semi-modern army and police force needs recruits who can read and learn from what they read. You’re going to have to both teach them to read AND teach them how to do their jobs. This makes the project much slower and more difficult. I’d like to have it as easy as your comments seem to imply; I just don’t think it is possible.

this goes for many ministers, generals, and well-connected afghans of all stripes. as long as leadership is viewed as a for-profit endeavour , it will fail. this problem has been enabled and exacerbated by the bush administration’s willingness to embrace and promote corruption at a center-of-government level. whenever they were faced with a choice between short-term stability and justice, they chose stability… and like the saying goes, they got neither.

that’s why this current election is such a wonderful opportunity for the forces of good. karzai has been caught dead to rights trying to cheat his way back into power, so let’s make an example of him… and anyone else who tries any shit. let’s reboot this puppy and do it right this time.

i have serious doubts as to whether anything short of that would work.

The Pakistani Army and its ISI are massively changing; but I wouldn’t assume that AQ linked networks don’t still have some assets in them; especially among retired flag generals. Nor would I assume that AQ linked networks cannot hit the US homeland. Many very smart people (including non Americans) think they can.

FD Chief, I like the way you think But for it to work the international community needs to commit to a long term foreign aid commitment to the Afghans conditioned on difficult Afghan reforms. I think it would cost about $250 billion in grants over 20 years from the entire international community.

I might think through some of the specifics differently. You would need to work through the current CSTC-A, Afghan National Army Training Command, Command and General Staff College, National Military Academy of Afghanistan, and Kabul Military Training Centre system. You would also need to work through the existing MoI system. Getting buy in from the flag general officers of the ANA and ANP would be critical for success.

The Afghans have plenty of volunteers and don’t need a draft.

I think the ANA needs 1 ISAF embedded division HQS, 6 ISAF emdedded advisory brigades (one per ANA Corps and division HQs), in addition to a large number of trainers. The ANP need probably 1 ISAF embedded division HQs, 6 ISAF advisory embedded brigades, in addition to a large number of trainers (hopefully Chinese, Indian, Indonesian.) Transfer all battlespace to the ANSF, including all reconstruction and PRTs.

12 super embedded ISAF advisory brigades seem like a lot, but this is necessary to transfer all of Afghanistan to the ANSF quickly, which you seem to favor (so do I.)

Then gradually draw down to ISAF one emdedded advisory battalion per ANA Corps or Division HQs. Keep gradually drawing down as the ANSF and security situation improves.

Currently Kabul province has completely transitioned to the ANP. The ANA has two brigades with one combat line battalion each in Kabul, but they are in there for backup. 3 more provinces that can transition quickly are Paktia, Paktika and Ghazni (to 203 ANA.)

BUT…I would argue that this is a good argument AGAINST setting up the U.S. and the West as an “anti-Islamic” coalition.

Nothing inflames a religion more than religious war. Think of our own history: the bad blood between Protestant and Catholic fired up religious passions that had cooled in the light of the Renaissance to the point where it still lingers in places like Belfast. What killed the religious wars in Europe? Was it victory for one religion over the other?

No. It was the Enlightenment, which made religion irrelevant to daily social and political life. The religions linger on, but, in Europe, are little more than hobbies for 98% of the people. Fighting religion didn’t beat religion; distracting people and teaching them to ignore it did.

Or think of the example of Soviet Communism. We constructed a huge military edifice to contain it, and we did, by and large. But did we actually FIGHT the Soviets? And if we had, would the result have been as positive as what did happen?

So I would argue, again, that what we should be doing in AfPak is:

1. Backing WAY off with the kinetic stuff. Draw down the foreign combat troops to a tiny maneuver element, say 20,000 troops for the entire region. Disperse another 20,000 or so as advisers and trainers for the ANA. This can be done inside of 12 months.

2. Take the existing ANA and cadre it. Let’s say that that out of the 100K ANA troops currently fielded that half are competent to move up a grade. Take the remaining 50K and keep them as maneuver units. Take the remaining 50K and bump them all up 1-2 grades: squad leaders become platoon sergeants, platoon leaders become company commanders, battalion commander become brigade commanders, etc.

3. Establish 4-6 regional training centers and start a national mobilization equivalent to the U.S. Army draft of WW2. Use the ANA cadre and the ISAF trainers to form a 300-400K ANA that is purely designed for FID. No bells and whistles, no U.S. style “back-off-and-call-for-fire” dog and pony show. Pure light infantry tactics; patrolling, movement to contact, fire and maneuver. These guys are already among the world’s most deadly light infantrymen – it’s their tradition, ask the Brits.

4. Meanwhile, get some Afghans out front to actually LEAD. Get the U.S. and NATO talking heads off the TV screens. Make an Afghan general the CIC of ISAF. Make the Kabul government take over. The U.S. and NATO can noodle around behind the scenes as much as they want, but the goal is to make the whole thing an Afghan show inside of a year or so.

Will all this solve the problem of political turmoil and tribal war in Afghanistan? Hell, no. In fact, the real problem with an ANA, any ANA, is defusing the tribal fault lines that divide the whole “country”; figuring out a way to get Tajiks, Pashtuns, Hazaras, etc. to work together. Working together requires trust, which isn’t something that tribal societies have a lot of.

But what it WILL do is take the whole “Western infidel oppresses Islamic hero” factor out of the picture. There will still be oppression – you can’t have a civil war without SOMEbody getting oppressed. But it will push the whole godless West-Islam issue off the front burner and go a long way to defuse the AQ/Talib/various islamic faction rhetoric.

Then we can let the place either stumble along in its long post-colonial, post-Mughal desuetude or develop its own Islamic Enlightenment. Either way, we’ve done what we can to frustrate the people who wish us ill while reducing our involvement in one of the most intractable spots on the globe…

“China and India should be paying for this operation because they will be in trouble (india much more than china) if the US leaves. . . I am saying thinking clearly about its aims will help to concentrate minds all around the region and clarify priorities for the US itself.” I agree with this. America should demand that India and China should each pledge more than $10 billion in Afghan grants over the next 20 years, in addition to a civilian surge of tens of thousands (to embed in Afghan civilian institutions.) Obama should threaten that America might rethink its Afghan efforts if they don’t pony up. Ditto with Russia, given that Russia considered attacking the Taliban in 1999 and 2001.
Read this article on the treat of extremist terrorism to Russia:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/26/how_russia_can_and_cant_help_obama?page=0,1
In a spring 1988 meeting with US analysts “Two threats topped the Soviets’ list of concerns. The first was Islamist terrorism. The Soviet Union had by then decided to withdraw from Afghanistan, but it expected no end to the Islamist fanaticism its invasion had unleashed. The Kremlin thought Islamist terrorism would spread through Central Asia and then up the Caucasus — much of which was then Soviet territory. Moscow itself would suffer terrorist bombings. The Soviets’ warned that the United States, despite its support for the mujahedeen, would also be a target of Islamist terrorism . . . Over the course of centuries, Russian armies had expanded their empire through the Caucasus, the Asian steppe, and the Ottoman-controlled Balkans. Russians and Muslims, in their eyes, were implacable enemies, a fact unchanged by a multi-ethnic Soviet Union. For them, Islam could only be in retreat or on the march.

The second Soviet fear was nuclear terrorism. This was also surprising. The United States worried about the security of its own nuclear facilities and nuclear weapons in the event of a possible terrorist attack. But the United States still considered nuclear terrorism a remote threat. Here it was, No. 2 on the Soviet list. Why?

The answer was the disaster at Chernobyl. In 1986, a nuclear reactor caught fire and spewed radioactive contamination across Europe. Because of human error, we emptied a city, the Soviets said. But a Chernobyl-like catastrophe could just as easily have been because of human malevolence.”