Oopsies

By Dave Anderson:

The US has multiple, and usually conflicting objectives in Afghanistan. One of the larger conflicts in the objective set is the anti-drug imperative of domestic American politics and keeping the major warlords on the Karzai government's side.  The anti-drug imperative forces plenty of groups who want to raise a simple, low water intensity agricultural product that allows the farmers to generate enough cash to buy foreign and much cheaper wheat to align with groups who are not interested in opium eradication for protection. Those groups are mostly fighting against ISAF. 

Not all of those groups are on the Taliban's side.  Some are on their own side and had been counting on official or unofficial American protection for their drug trades.  The New York Times reports on one of the major drug runners in Afghanistan:

When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons....

Mr. Juma Khan was secretly flown to Washington for a series of clandestine meetings with C.I.A. and D.E.A. officials in 2006. Even then, the United States was receiving reports that he was on his way to becoming Afghanistan’s most important narcotics trafficker by taking over the drug operations of his rivals and paying off Taliban leaders and corrupt politicians in President Hamid Karzai’s government. In a series of videotaped meetings in Washington hotels, Mr. Juma Khan offered tantalizing leads to the C.I.A. and D.E.A., in return for what he hoped would be protected status as an American asset, according to American officials....

We know that one of the major drug dealers in Afghanistan is also a major US intelligence asset.  We know that the Karzai family is corrupt as hell. The private security companies routinely stage extortion ambushes.  We know all of that and yet a significant segment of the American political elite, including the current President, thinks nation transformation and building is both obtainable and a reasonable goal given current resource constraints. 

So just another couple of years, thousands of more lives, hundreds of billions of more dollars, to piss down the drain to pursue contradictary goal sets in Afghanistans.  Sounds like a great plan to me [/snark]