Or, y'know, we could have converted all of the small-time Afghani farmers into growing cotton instead of opium poppies. More profitable for farmers, help them build their community, and directly strike at the heart of Taliban funding.

But no, our own goddamn government is too goddamn stupid to see a solution to multiple problems handed to them on a silver platter.

Read this article to get good and pissed off on a Monday morning about how stupid USAID has been about this issue (pops).

Pass it on. You should be pissed off about this. Our guys, and theirs, are getting killed because of incompetent bureaucrats building their picayune empires.

RedVentrue:
Opium has a higher profit margin, compared to cotton, and we just upped the price a little more.

Artificial scarcity.

Actually, on the production side, cotton can make just as much money for the farmers as opium. It only gets really profitable after processing & refinement. And the farmers see almost none of that.

Which is why they are still in crushing poverty.

kindms: RedVentrue:
Here is a better idea. Buy the drugs directly from the farmer. Cut the taliban out of the picture, no need to bust them etc. Just set up an easy and effective way for the farmers to sell their products directly to the us govt. it could either be further refined by by pharma or simply destroyed.

I would be willing to bet it would be cheaper and more effective.

The point is, there is equal, if not greater demand for cotton, and it pays just as well to the local farmers, and there is no danger of it being diverted. Several hundred pounds of processed opium is basically a motive with a universal adapter. So why keep it around when there is something equally effective without any of the drawbacks?

All the farmers need to switch over is the seeds, and some large-scale infrastructure that would pay for itself in less than a decade. From an asymmetrical warfare perspective alone, depriving your enemies of the funding with which to finance their side of the conflict is a key victory, worth more than killing hundreds of Taliban fighters.

But the Marines can't finance it, otherwise they would. And USAID has their heads firmly entrenched up their asses.

If you want a reason to be pissed off about our failure to learn lessons from history, Little America (pops to Amazon) is probably one of your best resources for criticizing anyone and everyone in the higher levels of US government, Democrat & Republican alike. Which is probably why no one's talking about it--doesn't make convenient grist for the talking-head mill.