OK...I canceled my subscription to the Chicago Tribune. I couldn't take the bias on the Editorial pages anymore. Molly was gone, no more Luckovich cartoons and even the comics had dwindled in stature. However, I am STILL receiving my Tribune????? At least I'm not paying for this trash.
Today, the front page had an article about all the good stuff we are letting the Afghans have with all their new Freedom. I checked, it is not on their web edition. But I Googled(yes, I can Google at my age) and found it so read it if you have time. Here
The gist is that Afghans are becoming addicted at an alarming rate. We have "replaced" the Taliban with Heroin. Except we haven't.
The Taliban is back but they have a larger problem to deal with. Heroin. Opium.
Afghanistan is now the world's leading supplier of opium. In fact it is nearly the world's exclusive supplier. It exceeds the world's demand by 3000 tons. And, according to the article, may directly lead to the deaths of 100,000 people. One million Afghan people use illegal drugs, including Heroin and the largest increase in addicts has been among women and children. 13 percent of known addicts are women and 7 percent are children.
As a women in the article explains, it costs on $2 for her and the children to get high but food and medicine cost more. "You don't make enough money for me to go to the doctor. What am I supposed to do?"
"Nobody stops it. Nobody bans it. The Police are there, but they do nothing. In every corner of the city, people are selling heroin." Shaista
It is the fruit of a poor country that we "liberated" but did nothing to aid. There were no millions or billions of dollars to rebuild Afghanistan, we gave them a puppet from the oil companies for a leader and provided him with 200 bodyguards as he hides in Kabul. People were still living in tents in bombed out Kabul 2 years after we invaded. War Lords were encouraged and supported in the effort to drive out the Taliban. These War Lords, in turn, terrorised the populace and forced many to grow poppies to support the War Lords' reign of control and terror. Now that the Taliban is back...what is being done? No troops support the people, only Karzai. There are too many fields for our meager forces to keep track of or burn. No replacement crops/money is given when fields are burned so families starve. Our soldiers are becoming a symbol of destruction and a focus of hatred in Afghanistan as well. America the great has done nothing to be proud of there.
Mothers are giving their hungry and crying babies poppy fruit to silence them. And we are responsible. Is the United States getting rid of the poppy fields? Helping farmers to plant other crops? Building treatment centers? Starting a "Just Say No" campaign to fight addiction?
Read the article by Kim Barker, Addictive Harvest Grips a Nation and then see what the future of Iraq holds. 1 in 32 Afghans is addicted. With Iraq's population declining through the exercise of their voting legs, it won't be long before opium enters and finds a huge market there.
Afghanistan has no oil, just a route from oil fields to our "friends" in Pakistan. Now Afghanistan has potential worth in the form of Poppy fields and a world of future addicts. Bush should be happy. He has given the people of Afghanistan something very precious and eased their pain!
It is a legacy that he can brag about, one that he can appreciate. I hope it makes the next book about his life.