An American Lion

Poppies

We are accelerating down the slippery slope in Afghanistan. What is apparent to me is that no one in the Obama Administration wants to win. They want to have a period of marking time and minimizing casualties, and then they are going to abandon Afghanistan just in time for the 2012 election. They have,in effect, given up.

What fuels the actions against NATO forces in Afghanistan is money derived from the worldwide opium trade. The role that opium plays in Afghan politics is clear--it sends money to the Taliban and the assorted forces opposed to the Afghan government and it corrupts the Afghan government.

When General McKiernan was fired, he was a strong advocate of interdicting the worldwide opium trade:

McKiernan is a victim of his own success--he was turning Afghanistan around too quickly, thereby laying most of the blame on the neglect of the Bush Administration. He was too quickly standing up the Afghan forces and he was certain that the key to success lay in removing Hamid Karzai and his corrupt family, which would then in turn allow NATO to combat the heroin problem. Someone in NATO likely benefits from the heroin problem--most likely France or anywhere that heroin is controlled by European criminal elements.

And:

McKiernan also said his troops had increased targeting of drug operations eight- or 10-fold in the past four months, specifically for drug lords or operations that could be tied to insurgents and insurgent funding.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the main ingredient in heroin. The Afghan drug trade accounts for 90 percent of worldwide production. The U.N. estimated last year that up to $500 million from the illegal drug trade flows to Taliban fighters and criminal groups.

"If there is a ... drug kingpin, but he's also connected to the Taliban and he's running weapons or IED (improvised explosive device) materials across the (Pakistan) border, I can make that nexus connection and ... we are doing that," he said.

McKiernan called heroin trafficking "a debilitating system across this country, that eats away at good governance, eats away at progress and it certainly provides a funding source for the insurgency."

The general stressed the need for coalition cooperation in Afghanistan in anti-drug and counterinsurgency efforts. He said he worried about the consequences of America shouldering too much of the burden.

"I am constantly maintaining the attitude that if nations, for a variety of reasons, are unwilling or unable to commit to military operations, commit in another way," he said.

McKiernan said that could include funding, police training and educational services.

In light of these facts, we see what is really going on with the dropping of this weekend bombshell:

The United States announced a new drug policy Saturday for opium-rich Afghanistan, saying it was phasing out funding for eradication efforts and using the money for drug interdiction and alternate crop programs instead.

The U.S. envoy for Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, told The Associated Press that eradication programs weren't working and were only driving farmers into the hands of the Taliban.

"Eradication is a waste of money," Holbrooke said on the sidelines of a Group of Eight foreign ministers' meeting on Afghanistan, where he said it had been warmly received, particularly by the United Nations.

In order to protect the Karzai family connection to the worldwide heroin trade, the Obama Administration has effectively given up in Afghanistan. If it is already known that the heroin trade fuels the Afghan insurgency and corrupts the Afghan government, then the simply act of walking away from the policy of eradication indicates surrender. What is the new policy? Does it give the Afghan people an agricultural basis of sustaining themselves? Or is that gone as well?

The military establishment is clearly operating as if they want to survive the next three and a half years under President Obama's thumb. They're going to pull back,set up firebases,pretend they care about the outcome, turn a blind eye to the Karzai family's doube-dealing, and do nothing.

Our mission in Afghanistan is doomed.