Afghanistan - A Modest Proposal, Say "Cheese"

These two articles sum up our current situtation in Afghanistan for me. The first is for real and the second satiric piece is so on the money it's scary.

http://www.slate.com/id/2234333/?from=rss

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/u_s_continues_quagmire_building


We have been sending our kids to Afghanistan for nine years now. President Obama is presented with a snarled mess of jihdist/insurrectionist/narco terrorist Middle East intrigue. We installed our guy in Afghanistan, President Karzai, whose brother (on the CIA payroll) is a big wig in the narcotics industry in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium.

We Americans, and Europeans too, buy their drugs, thereby supporting the Taliban and Al Quaeda to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year. President Karzai and his government control an area about the size of Carter Lake, Iowa. And the Taliban now control most of Afghanistan.

For all the sacrifices we've asked our kids to make, we've created a fundamentalist Muslim narco/terrorist country which now threatens Pakistan as well. How crazy is all that? If it weren't so tragic and important, it'd seem like a Keystone Kops movie run amok on a national scale.

The former administration diverted its attention from Afghanistan for a war of choice in Iraq for reasons still undetermined and created an unstable catastrophe for the Iraqi people, unleashing an Al Quaeda invasion into Iraq, a civil war between religious factions, and at least a hundred thousand civilian deaths, which to this day are still continuing.

Let's hope that President Obama can sort through this tangled mess we've created and plot a way out.....At least his Administration is thinking about the problem, which is more that I can say about the previous President......We have a very bad track record installing foreign leaders. The longer we are there, the worse it gets.

Our government should buy all the opium from Afghan farmers at higher prices than they can get from the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We'd win the hearts of Afghanistan farmers, we'd strike a blow against organized crime in our own country, and we'd deplete the treasuries of the terrorists at the same time. Our government buys surplus crops in the US all the time. Cheese anybody? Why not opium in Afghanistan?

Regards,
Bud C
www.artbycassiday.com


ps. I don't know if I mentioned it, but I have 2010 calendars for sale.........