Jeff, Your Academy Brain Needed

[Kathianne]

I remember way back when, reading milbloggers writing about the mistakes being made with throwing the Iraqi officers into the detention camps, while trying to gain footholds following the initial invasion. Those complaints continued up to and after Saddam's capture, then ceased, probably because they were all in custody.

Then the fallout happend, which was being predicted from sergeants on up.

I'm wondering, does this set off alarm bells with you?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ac35906e-0ae...b5df10621.html

US under fire over Afghan poppy plan

By Guy Dinmore in Washington and Rachel Morarjee in Kabul

Published: May 25 2007 19:39 | Last updated: May 25 2007 19:39

The US is proceeding with plans for a big crop-spraying programme to destroy opium poppies in Afghanistan, in spite of resistance from the government of President Hamid Karzai and objections from some senior US military officers who fear it will fuel the Taliban insurgency.

A US delegation will soon leave for Kabul to persuade Mr Karzai that glycophate, a herbicide that is widely applied by US farmers, is safe to use and that trial ground-spraying should begin for the first time since the US ousted the Taliban regime in 2001.

But controversy over the proposed spraying is causing rifts within the Nato alliance. Some governments, including Germany, want nothing to do with the eradication programme and are threatening to reconsider their posture in Afghanistan, diplomats say. Afghan security forces trained by Dyncorp, a private US defence contractor, are to carry out the spraying.

“There has to be a stick that goes with the carrot,” said Ambassador Thomas Schweich, US co-ordinator for counter-narcotics in Afghanistan. Eradication had to be a component of US policy, he said.

Mr Schweich said no decision had been reached on aerial spraying and this would rest on agreement with the Afghan government. But he made it clear that crop spraying was the preferred US approach, combined with economic development and information programmes as well as robust efforts to interdict drug traffickers.

Pointing to a map of Afghanistan, he described a broad north-south divide. Poppy cultivation had either fallen sharply or stabilised in the north-central provinces that were more secure, but risen in the west, south and east, where the Taliban insurgency was gaining strength.

Eradication would target wealthier farmers who had spurned other development options, he said. “We are not targeting poor farmers. This is fiction,” he said.

Afghanistan supplies over 90 per cent of the world’s opium, but the crop also accounts for about a third of the country’s entire economic output.

“The US is hell-bent on eradication,” said Robert Rotberg, Harvard University professor. “They claim it worked in Colombia and so will work in Afghanistan. It is not clear to anyone it worked in Colombia,” he added.

[5stringJeff]

Here's my take:

Afghanistan's economy currently depends on poppy. The Taliban, especially, gets a lot of money from opium sales. So, in a sense, getting Afghan farmers to quit cultivating poppy is a worthy goal in the WOT, as well as the "war on drugs."

However, as the article state, 1/3 of the economy is poppy. You can't just go and exterminate 1/3 of a country's economy because you don't like the crop. There may be short-term gains, but in the long term, this is not going to win the "hearts and minds" of the Afghan people; it's going to piss people off.

Bottom line: bad policy. Don't do it.

[Kathianne]

Here's my take:

Afghanistan's economy currently depends on poppy. The Taliban, especially, gets a lot of money from opium sales. So, in a sense, getting Afghan farmers to quit cultivating poppy is a worthy goal in the WOT, as well as the "war on drugs."

However, as the article state, 1/3 of the economy is poppy. You can't just go and exterminate 1/3 of a country's economy because you don't like the crop. There may be short-term gains, but in the long term, this is not going to win the "hearts and minds" of the Afghan people; it's going to piss people off.

Bottom line: bad policy. Don't do it.

Thanks, that's what I thought too.

[Mr. P]

Here's my take:

Afghanistan's economy currently depends on poppy. The Taliban, especially, gets a lot of money from opium sales. So, in a sense, getting Afghan farmers to quit cultivating poppy is a worthy goal in the WOT, as well as the "war on drugs."

However, as the article state, 1/3 of the economy is poppy. You can't just go and exterminate 1/3 of a country's economy because you don't like the crop. There may be short-term gains, but in the long term, this is not going to win the "hearts and minds" of the Afghan people; it's going to piss people off.

Bottom line: bad policy. Don't do it.

I agree, for what it's worth. It's not just bad policy, it's plain dumb policy.

[Kathianne]

I agree, for what it's worth. It's not just bad policy, it's plain dumb policy.

Well we're all in agreement, I guess that means that it probably will be done.

[Mr. P]

Well we're all in agreement, I guess that means that it probably will be done.

Probably..

[Dilloduck]

Probably..

Probably cheaper to buy the whole crop unless the CIA is already doing that.

[Mr. P]

Probably cheaper to buy the whole crop unless the CIA is already doing that.

I would think so.

[TheSage]

Probably cheaper to buy the whole crop unless the CIA is already doing that.

most likely

http://www.whale.to/b/drug_war.html
[Illegal drugs are a main earner for the Fascist secret government, alongside their huge income from the more addictive, and harder to quit Pharmaceutical ones. Drugs also are used as weapons to destroy a society with crime, debt and cut any connection to thinking and the spiritual cuircuits. The more drugs you sell the more you control people. Satan's closed circle. Coke and is the 'illegal' Devil's drug, but the pharma ones are actually more of a problem.