Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (317808)	7/31/2009 11:26:20 AM
From: miraje	2 Recommendations Respond to of 793964

cut a deal with the warlords left standing to buy up all the poppies in exchange for no Al Qaeda there, we could have left them to their miserable existence The RJ agrees with you... lvrj.com A 'wholesale change' in Afghan strategy? Drug policy still makes enemies of the common folk Imagine a foreign army occupies the state of Indiana. Its commanders are concerned that local Hoosiers don't like the foreigners in their midst, displaying that dislike practically every night by setting off murderous roadside bombs every time a patrol goes by. And because the local people are at odds with the occupation forces, they offer those troops precious little help or intelligence as they pursue their military mission. The commander brings in some experts to find out why his troops are so unpopular. They interview the local farmers. And the answer comes back: "It's the corn." "What? The corn?" "Yeah, the stuff the Indians called 'maize,' " the experts explain. "It's the major agricultural crop around these parts. It's the way the locals make their living." "And? So?" "Your men have been burning it." "Of course we've been burning it. Importing corn is a crime, back home," the commander says. "It cuts into the profits of the wheat and potato farmers. Besides, people associate it with some very unpopular ethnic minorities." "Well, that may be," one expert responds. "But it's the way these locals make their living, and if they see you as people who are here to destroy their crops and leave them starving and penniless, your problems aren't going to improve." "We gave them free seeds. We told them they could grow pansies and zinnias. Pansies are quite lovely." "Not going to work, sir. These people have been growing corn for generations. It's all they know. There are established markets for their corn. They're corn farmers." Finally, the military commander relents. He orders his men to stop burning the corn in the fields. Instead, they wait until the local farmers have gathered their corn into barns and silos ... and then they burn it. It sounds like a version of Monty Python's old "Doug and Dinsdale Piranha" comedy sketch, but unfortunately it's no joke. The lives lost are real, and they're American. The occupied state isn't Indiana, it's Afghanistan. And the crop isn't corn, it's the opium poppy, one of the few real money-makers that will grow in that arid, rocky and mountainous land. Last month, U.S. officials announced our soldiers currently occupying parts of that forbidding land will no longer support the destruction of individual farmers' poppy plants. Instead -- we're serious now -- they will increase attacks on "drug warehouses controlled by powerful drug lords," where the poppy seeds, raw opium and heroin are stored after being moved from the fields. The Associated Press obligingly reported this as a "wholesale change in strategy." But it's not. A "wholesale change in strategy" -- and probably the only one that would work, unless we plan to station an infantry squad and a soup kitchen in every Afghan field forever -- would be to find out how much the Afghans get for their crop, offer them 15 percent more, and buy it. The stuff could then be sold on the world market, where there seems to be plenty of demand, much of which is for legitimate medical uses, even by the standards of those who favor heavy government regulation. "But that would mean the United States would be profiting from drug dealing!" the country's drug warriors would exclaim. Oh, please. George Washington put down the Whisky Rebellion because Pennsylvanians were refusing to pay that excise which was the young republic's main source of revenue -- the liquor tax. To this day, Washington benefits from heavy excise taxes every time an American lights a cigarette or pours a glass of booze -- among the least healthy recreational drugs commonly consumed. And the federal government spends millions of tax dollars on medical research, one of the goals of which is to develop new drugs that produce billions in profits for major drug dealers, though of course we call them "legitimate pharmaceutical manufacturers." In fact, nowhere in the Constitution can any authority for Washington to regulate the traffic in plant extracts like the Afghan poppy be found -- no one even tried, before 1916 -- though that's neither here nor there for today's discussion. If supplying the "legitimate medical market" still leaves us with a surplus, stockpile the stuff for the time when America's elderly, having exhausted all our Medicare funds, need some of that "end-of-life counseling" now being proposed by Sen. Edward Kennedy and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Use the proceeds to reimburse Americans for the costs of the Afghan incursion. Finally, the taxpayers would actually get something back for one of their unwilling "investments." But that's not all. Once we're the Afghans' friends -- paying them more than they've ever received for their crops -- proceed to make them another offer: We'll pay them a bonus for each load of opium, if it's delivered with one of Osama bin Laden's men riding on top, all trussed up and ready for questioning.

To: LindyBill who wrote (317808)	7/31/2009 12:11:35 PM
From: FJB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793964

U.S. troops killed in deadliest month of Afghan war Fri Jul 31, 2009 10:34am EDT By Paul Tait KABUL (Reuters) - A U.S. service member was killed as the deadliest month for foreign troops in the Afghanistan war drew to a close, the U.S. military said on Friday, with commanders vowing to continue the fight despite the toll. The death in southern Afghanistan brought to 40 the number of U.S. troops killed in July, by far the heaviest monthly toll in the 8-year-old war. The worst previous month for U.S. forces was in September 2008, when 26 were killed. The latest death occurred in a firefight with insurgents in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, the U.S. military said, without giving further details. At least 70 foreign troops have been killed in July. Britain has suffered its worst battlefield casualties since the 1980s Falklands War, with the 22 troops killed in the month taking its total losses in Afghanistan to 191, 12 more than were killed in the Iraq war. Casualties spiked after thousands of U.S. and British troops this month launched major operations in southern Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold and the center of Afghanistan's opium production. "We understood the return of security to these areas would not be achieved without sacrifice," said U.S. Rear Admiral Greg Smith, chief spokesman for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. "For some that has come at a high price," he told Reuters. "CLEAR, HOLD, BUILD" The Helmand operations are the first under U.S. President Barack Obama's new regional strategy to defeat the Taliban and its Islamist militant allies and stabilize Afghanistan. They come before crucial presidential elections on August 20. They are also the first phase of a new "clear, hold and build" strategy introduced after criticism that previous strategies lacked cohesion and direction. The operations are designed to clear areas of insurgents and then hold them, something that overstretched British-led NATO forces had been unable to do before this month. "It's too early to assess the true impact of operations in the south. The clearing of insurgents continues and will for many more weeks to come," Smith said. The United States has around 62,000 troops in Afghanistan, out of a total foreign force of about 101,000. U.S. forces are set to rise to some 68,000 by the end of the year. The extra troops include 4,000 meant to help train Afghan security forces and will be followed by a "civilian surge" of several hundred meant to help Afghanistan rebuild institutions shattered by decades of war. General Stanley McChrystal, the new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has also introduced a new counter-insurgency strategy and issued a new tactical directive, which includes limiting the use of air strikes, aimed at reducing the number of civilian casualties in the war. Civilian deaths have outraged many Afghans and caused friction between Washington and Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government. A U.N. report released in Geneva on Friday found that 1,013 civilians had been killed between January and June this year, up from 818 in the same period last year, as the battlefield in Afghanistan increasingly moved into residential areas. The deaths were largely caused by air strikes, car bombs and suicide attacks, with the Taliban blamed for 59 percent of the fatalities, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan said. "All parties involved in this conflict should take all measures to protect civilians, and to ensure the independent investigation of all civilian casualties, as well as justice and remedies for the victims," said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay. Six civilians were killed or wounded by a roadside bomb in Jawzjan province in Afghanistan's north late on Thursday, the Interior Ministry said. In southeastern Ghazni province, Afghan and NATO troops killed 11 Taliban insurgents on Thursday, local officials said.