Obama Turns Focus to War in Afghanistan

Gen. Stanley McChrystal is already a failure as a theater commander. In a land where it is notoriously difficult and dangerous to get from point A to point B, McChrystal isn't making the enemy come to him. US and NATO troops instead traipse the countryside looking for Taliban. Along the way, boom, IEDs.

In contrast, the opium poppies remain rooted to the ground from which they grow. Unlike the Taliban they can't pick up and flee to Waziristan or other compass points, nor mingle anonymously with non-combatants.

So instead of going after opium poppies and those flushed out in the open to oppose eradication, President dirty-hands Obama instead chooses to pursue an elusive -- and deadly -- enemy. The Muslim Afghan farmer whose religion prohibits intoxicants but cultivates opium poppies anyways, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Pakistan's ISI, the Russian mafia, the CIA, and President Obama all have a problem with poppy eradication.

By moving away from focusing on poppy eradication, the Taliban dictate the when and where of confrontation. Consequently, they only have to get lucky once in a while. US and NATO troops have to be lucky all the time.

Eradication of the poppies was wanted by the Afghan government. Of course though, erudites in the West know better.

What these Western erudites know better is how to get bogged down in the mother of all quagmires. And run up the senseless death toll before admitting the unacceptable cost of their folly.

If you won't by choice or can't by feasibility get rid of opium poppies first in Afghanistan, four thousand more US and NATO personnel will die over the next four years. Then we all will admit failure and draw down from the country. And the Afghan farmer will still cultivate opium poppies.

dom youngross 1:54AM July 21, 2009