I'm somewhat of an expert in second-guessing the White House and the Pentagon - having spent a year in Vietnam where we common enlistees and draftees used to solve the situation among ourselves on a daily basis. The best strategy we ever came up with was the "Caterpillar," in which we would employ 10 million bulldozers purchased from the Caterpillar Company. They would be lined up on the western border of Vietnam, from where they would begin to push the entire friggin' country east into the South China Sea. Worked for me.....
OK, that's a little gonzo, but sometimes you just have to think outside the box. Thus my "can't lose" strategy for success in Afghanistan:
HEROIN, INC.
We take the drug business away from the warlords and insurgents, and put it with the government, where it belongs.
Think of it.....
We've got years of drug-running experience with the CIA. Let's use it!
Here's a little outline of how it might go:
- We buy up the whole opium crop by paying every grower in the country 150% of what they might get from a criminal enterprise.
- We hire virtually every able-bodied man in the country to gather the product and process it in regional factories. Oh, and stand guard. (This is a variation on the "Surge" in Iraq, where we paid off Sunni insurgents to stop killing Americans and cooperate with the central government.)
- Having cornered 95% or so of the world supply of heroin, we then prevail upon NATO countries and other western friends to legalize and control it, and of course, buy their controlled supplies from Heroin, Inc.
Another significant portion of the product can be processed into morphine and barbituates to be marketed through big pharmaceutical companies.
- Afghan insurgency is over.
- Afghanistan has a sustainable economy.
- Huge economic and societal benefits accrued by virtue of also winning the War On Drugs - all of which would be similarly legalized.
- Any continuing subsidies for Heroin, Inc. would be far less than operating a war.
Waddya think?