Entries for November 2008

By Sam Dealey, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

The latest report on Afghanistan's opium economy from the U.N.'s drug tsar, Antonio Maria Costa, only confirms what sensible people foretold six years ago: that the Wars on Drugs and Terror are inexorably linked.

Briefly, here's the latest: Overall, opium cultivation is down significantly across Afghanistan. Ninety-eight percent of the country's opium last year was sourced to seven provinces in the south and southwest where Taliban control is strongest. The Taliban raked in as much as $300 million from the opium trade last year, but supply vastly exceeds demand and prices are falling. As such, there's anecdotal evidence that, just as it did in 2001, the Taliban is purposely curtailing opium cultivation to drive up prices on its significant stockpiles.

As I've written before, the West's failure to aggressively battle Afghanistan's drug trade has enriched the Taliban, institutionalized corruption, impeded government control, and cemented the trafficking routes that also carry weapons and fighters. Handing out wheat seeds and fatwas only goes so far, and eradicating farmers' plots is only a token gesture that hits too far down the food chain. With the opium trade now more concentrated in the hands of those who matter, the time for an assertive interdiction campaign is long overdue.

As Costa remarked, "Opium production and prices can both be kept down by destroying high-value targets like drug markets, heroin labs, and trafficking convoys." Interdiction like that requires muscle, and the handful of DEA agents and their mentored Afghan units can't do it alone. NATO forces—and particularly the Pentagon—should drop their bureaucratic objections and get involved. Like it or not, the Taliban is a drug cartel, and to ignore that means fighting only half a war.

Yesterday's New York Times exposed yet another scandal involving Charles Rangel, the chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, and Republicans are making hay of it.

In an apparent quid pro quo last year, Rangel killed a tax bill that would punish U.S. companies for relocating to lower-tax countries after a CEO pledged $1 million for the future "Charles B. Rangel School of Public Service" at the City College of New York. Previously, Rangel had supported the bill.

By Sam Dealey, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

This morning's papers delivered two good thumpings to Charlie Rangel, the good-time jolly-wolly Democrat who likes to crack wise from the chairman's seat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

By Sam Dealey, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

Saturday's Washington Post carried the latest installment of Sally Quinn's occasional humor columns about "faith." In truth, the pieces aren't supposed to be funny and have nothing to do with faith, but Quinn has a knack for being incongruous. The self-proclaimed Washington Insider combines a doyenne's nosiness with a teeny-bopper's vapidity to produce musings that are at once deeply shallow. Herewith her latest delight:

Following the Republican drubbing this election, the newspapers and airwaves have been clogged with party pooh-bahs wringing their hands and promising earnest introspection. The GOP must move in a new direction, they've said; the Republican Party must rediscover its soul.

Yesterday gave an indication of what direction that is—straight down the same path that's brought ruin. By 36 to 4, Republican senators overwhelmingly rebuffed an effort by South Carolina's Jim DeMint to impose term limits on its Appropriations Committee members. And this, on the 85th birthday of Sen. Ted Stevens, the (now former) chief Republican appropriator from Alaska convicted of corruption.

So the future of the GOP looks to be more of the same: Grand words about responsibility and change to the "folks back home," and more feckless spending and institutionalized corruption in Washington.

The GOP can mint new bulls like Stevens, and his legacy of willy-nilly bribery—bribery of voters, his own members, and himself—will continue. But so will his other legacy, confirmed last night after two weeks of suspense: He lost.

In an attempt to resuscitate his reputation as an honest news broker, former CBS anchor Dan Rather seems determined to prove that he is a victim of right-wing bias at the network.

Rather, you'll recall, was pushed out the door over his September 2004 60 Minutes piece that alleged President Bush received preferential treatment while in the Texas Air National Guard. In the story's bloody aftermath, it turned out that not only were smoking-gun documents fakes but Rather and his producer, Mary Mapes, lied that they had been authenticated by experts. Rather resigned from CBS and now is suing his former network for violating his contract and impugning his reputation.

In a gloating, open letter to Roger Ailes today, Harold Meyerson, a liberal columnist for the Washington Post, thanks the president of Fox News for the network's "consistent misrepresentation of the news." In Meyerson's view, the "right-wing fantasies" peddled by Fox News are so laughable that they have rolled back conservatism.

Now, I'm not a particular fan of U.S. television news—Fox News included. For the most part, the industry caters to the lowest common denominator, emphasizing tabloid, shallow reporting and anchor star-making rather than hard for-your-own-good news. Far better is the European model, exemplified by the Beeb, al Jazeera International, Euro News, and Sky.