Want To Fix Afghanistan? Legalize Opium Poppies

[EjazR]

Want To Fix Afghanistan? Legalize Opium Poppies

Yesterday, noted conservative columnist George Will suggested that we pull out of Afghanistan and instead focus on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. No doubt he has sympathetic ears on both sides of the aisle given how things are continuing to go bad in that troubled country.

Now, I don’t count myself in that group yet because I think we could turn it around, but much like we needed a bold strategy in Iraq (essentially paying insurgents not to kill us), so too do we need an equally bold strategy in Afghanistan.

I’ve talked about this before, but to sum it up…if we allow Afghans to grow opium legally (as they do in India and Turkey) and sell it to pharmaceutical companies, we can regulate it and they can pull themselves out of the crushing poverty that is the backdrop for sympathetic views of the Taliban.

If not, we should just pack up and go.

Seriously.

There’s absolutely ZERO chance of them building a stable economy with anything else and without money there is no hope for the country. And I mean NONE. Virtually nothing can grow there, they have scant natural resources and their infrastructure is literally 200 years behind ours. It’s a crazy place and we can’t simply pour billions after billions to rebuild. Well, we can, but it’s not a sustainable model.

And let’s look at the positive effects of this…

1. The total cost would be roughly $2B. Not much for us (a little more than we paid in the Cash For Clunkers program), but it would mean the world to the Aghans.

2. You think we’d win some hearts and minds if we bought Afghans’ crops instead of torching it? Especially when other countries can legally grow opium poppies for pharmaceutical purposes?

3. If we took all of these poppies off the market, the world wide heroin market would crash…or at least get A LOT more expensive. This would put it out of reach for your average junkie…so maybe they could get some help.

4. The Taliban has been using the poppies as a source of income will now not be able to count on it because we can pay more. Yes, we can let the magic of the markets price the Taliban right out of business. And without money, they’ll have a much tougher time rearming, attracting followers, etc. Remember, Iraq was turned around because we started flooding the country with money so folks would stop killing us. It worked there and it can work here.

So there are 4 good reasons and I’m sure there are more floating around out there. Simply put, the choice is ours, but one thing is for sure…we will not be able to make this country whole again by increasing our troop levels. No way, no how.