battle for the poppy fields

[dixierat]

Is this about shutting down parts of the Taliban or stopping the drug trade? I'd think marines have better things to do than be lowered to the level of the DEA.

The 2 go hand in hand in Afghanistan. The Taliban hires out people to guard the poppy fields. They use the profits to pay people, buy weapons, and bribe officials.

[Odysseus]

From 2006:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_ne...5890.stm?(none)
Also from 2006:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-1231...?refid=gg_x_02
From 2007:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/...ectid=10460427
So "why are poppy crops all the sudden 'BAD'?" Because the MSM wants something new to smear the United States with. War casualties in Iraq are down, the economy is starting to come out of its slowdown, President Bush is (finally) taking steps to curb gas prices, Barack Obama is getting endorsements from second world dictators, and the Democrat Congress continues to sit on its hands. Good news for the country, bad news for the Democrats, so the MSM has to come up with something new.
Poppies in Afghanistan are the story du jour, so they plaster it all over the news pages.

While I hate to agree with LogansPapa about anything, even a broken clock is right twice a day. The poppy crop is a problem, in that it provides the Taliban with a source of revenue and creates a mutually beneficial alliance between them and local farmers. It's also an easy crop to grow, more so than most food crops, which don't do well in the Afghan climate. Even if you could convince the locals to try growing something else, it's more work for less profit. The trick is to think outside of the box.

Counterinsurgency doctrine requires that you drive a wedge between terrorists and the population, but burning the crop just brings them closer together. The trick is to find a way to price the Taliban out of the market. What we ought to be doing is setting up a competing network to buy the crop and sell it to pharmaceutical firms for morphine production. This puts the farmers into a mutually beneficial relationship with the government and cuts out the Taliban, which will fall back on extortion and robbery for revenues, which will alienate them from the locals.

[LogansPapa]

Shades of Columbia. ;)

[Molon Labe]

Yeah just what we need....more f'n government regulations on drugs....
The drug war has worked so well.

[Odysseus]

Yeah just what we need....more f'n government regulations on drugs....
The drug war has worked so well.

Kind of missing the point there. The issue is that the Taliban makes money off of the poppy crop, which it then spends on the global jihad. Frankly, I don't care if you zombiefy yourself (as long as you don't get behind the wheel of a car in my neighborhood under the influence), but I would like to win the war.

[LogansPapa]

Point is - terrorists have made money off it since 9/11. We made efforts to make it appear as though we were doing something about that in during the years in-between then and now, because the warlords kept a relative peace. Stop with the hypocrisy already - and stop pretending the entire world doesn’t see the fallacy.

[Molon Labe]

Kind of missing the point there. The issue is that the Taliban makes money off of the poppy crop, which it then spends on the global jihad. Frankly, I don't care if you zombiefy yourself (as long as you don't get behind the wheel of a car in my neighborhood under the influence), but I would like to win the war.

Sorry I got a little off track...

Dont' think that drug use would fly in my civilian job or in my reserve unit....but that has nothing to do with the fact that you actually believe our fed cares seriously to cripple Opium production in the drug trade. It's highly unlikely that "winning the war" against the Taliban will be the result of destroying poppy fields. It's ever happened. Hell..we can't even do that on our own turf. We may see some headlines and footage of some fields being wrecked from time to time...but the trade keeps on moving doesn't it?. It's also not up to the U.S. military to be Narcotics agents. Let the Coast Guard do that.

Your point about counterinsurgency is also well taken about driving the "wedge" between the insurgency and the population. I completely agree that is at least one major goal of any successful nation building excursion. So.....
Why do we accept the fact that the talking heads in "Dubya's" camp didn't listen to the military experts or experts in Musllim affairs over the last 8 years? And Why instead did we accept baseless crap about how tribal societies just love Democracy and want to be the West's buddies? Not to mention how those failed doctrines managed to completely destroy your primary point about winning a war and allowed the insurgency and the population to become a blend.
I voted for this dunce twice mind you.

[namvet]

and their killing them

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KCO95uFf2pk

[Molon Labe]

and their killing them

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KCO95uFf2pk

And they are so ignorant they don't even realize what they are doing to themselves. But it's still their culture...
And we think a tribal 7th century culture can or want to grasp concepts such as a federal republic or liberal democracy?