Even the Russians, dispirited, gave up on the country, the Taliban and the warlords: for these resasons, they jettisoned their war, knowing it a losing and expensive battle. For all their efforts, however, they were forced to turn their attention to Chechnya. America has a long history of doing business with more high-profile, self-aggrandizing and less savory leaders than Karzai. In the region's realpolitik, Karzi is something of a Capt Jack Sparrow though more low-key and not quite as histrionic. Why would we want to rock the boat or make too many waves if it means it might sink our dubious and seemingly feckless "mission" in Afghanistan? The caveat here is not to conflate an Afghansitan with or without Karzi as indicative of our imminent success. That would be woefully unrealistic.

President Obama does not have a clue what to do. He inherited his dilemma, but that is not an excuse, regardless what he decides. Nor does Walter Russell Mead have a clue!

Here is the Afghanistan Solution, the strategy we need to make Afghanistan a favored nation and great trading partner; what we should do, how we can do it, and why.

I am an independent candidate for president. I have posted renditions of this article before. It is written from the gut. To fully understand just what we are up against: http://shar.es/ahO2t

The web site linked to the address will open your eyes!

Regardless what Obama does, this is what I am going to do, to settle this issue upon election to our highest office, an electoral happenstance that Obama's people cannot rule out. The American people will agree with every thing written here as this proposal is nonpartisan approach to "win" the war with minimal loss of life!

The key to everything going on is the opium poppy thatgrows as far as the eye can sea.

We must adopt this opium poppy strategy, explained below, or risk another terrorist attack in America, greater than the 9 / 11 attack. White House officials involved in the ongoing Afghanistan deliberations should ignore my candidacy for president, instead of rude, under the radar attempts to suppress it, and consider this clearly stated, well thought out solution as the only way to go!

The key to winning Afghanistan and Pakistan, to dissolving al Qaeda and Taliban, is controlling Afghanistan's home grown opium before the poppy's first milking.

On good ship Mother Urf, opium is the big papa, the Holy Father over all opiates. Morphine, and codeine are manufactured from heroin which is distilled from opium.

That dirt-cheap heroin readily bought on the streets Kabul, by the gates to where our troops are billeted, and on the streets of Manhattan and Washington DC began a sleepy Pashtun poppy, milked in Afghanistan, oceans away.

That hardly cut heroin bag; available on select street corners in every major city in the western world, started out an opium poppy grown in Afghanistan. You first saw the richly crowded Afghanistan poppy fields in The Wizard of Oz.

93% of the world's opium is grown and refined into heroin right on the Afghani farms! They are not such a backward unsophisticated country as rigid status quo bureaucrats paint them. The farmers grow the highest quality most potent opium that yields the most heroin, world wide!

Bill Gates must marvel at Afghanistan opium / heroin market share. Monopoly! Irreplaceable, worldwide; a blessing for all sides, especially us, because controlling the opium poppy fields means we will have taken over the main source of income for all the barbarian Taliban, the terrorist al Qaeda operations in all the neighboring countries, and all of the Western Hemisphere cartels and subtle European drug dealerships.

The key to the world's heroin smuggling and financial life blood of all these illegal forces is the opium poppy growing in Afghanistan. The retail total, as the article I point to in the link above is more that 500 BILLION dollars a year. (Not exactly chump change.)

The heroin lifeblood for terrorists and drug cartels is smuggled throughout Europe, with tons, tons going by plane and ship to South America where, repackaged, its origin is disguised so no one gets wise; and from there, routed to Mexican cartels, and from Mexico, into our country, to be sold in our ghettos, suburban streets and school yards.

Thousands of illegals from south of the border are here, building mini-networks of $2, $5, and dime bag dealers to supply our kids, turning them, and the children into addicts. For the Columbian and Mexican cartels this wholesale heroin represents many billions of dollars in USA retail distributorship business. Billions of underground criminal, and terrorist dollars!

The key to disbursing Taliban and al Qaeda, eradicating all of their corruption of Afghanistan, is to choke the supply of opium the Afghan farmers are world wide famous for; choke the supply which would wipe out the opium / heroin smuggling trade; and choke their criminal customers on our side of the sea, in the Western Hemisphere.

We don't have 68,000 troops in uniform, stationed in South America, chopping down the Columbian jungle to get at the cocaine plantations. That is not happening, and won't. But we do have 68,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan, with the needed more possibly on the way. The opium poppy strategy carefully explained here will SAVE MOST OF THEIR LIVES.

One of the prob limbs is our troops are under order to stand down when convoys carrying a couple tons of heroin are passing bye. Whoever instigated that order is a fascist in our uniform who must pay with court martial and sentenced for the attempted murder of millions of American kids in public schools being tempted every day to try the white powder.

Surely, you, the reader, besides, hopefully a White House official involved in the deliberations over what and how to proceed in Afghanistan do not want to see any more American blood shed, especially blood shed over here from a military failure to act over there.

The Taliban's and al Qaeda's end in the opium/heroin trade nets them many millions of dollars, more thsn a billion, yet peanuts in the big picture, falafel on the table for Taliban's "freedom fighters," living over the border, in Pakistan; and money for the families of al Qaeda's suicide bombers throughout the region.

But without the opium / heroin trade, al Qaeda and Taliban would be decimated. The Western Hemisphere drug cartels would lose hundreds of millions of dollars and be facing their own recession. Illegals, all over United States building networks of street dealers for their heroin would get laid off and have to sign up for unemployment insurance.

All of the illegal heroin in the United States would dry up as the pipeline for the heroin would be destroyed! That is exactly what we want, a take down of the heroin pipe line.

In Iraq, whoever is running the roads, wins. In Afghanistan, the opium dollar is fueling both the war and the Taliban structure, enabling them to strike! Afghanistan is a poor country with a rich culture. Whoever controls the opium harvest will have battled for that right. The hardy farmers get only enough to live decently and plant their fresh poppy.

The Taliban "freedom fighters" would leave for home in a heartbeat, were they not getting fed and allowed to while away their days smoking the black Afghani hashish. No food no money no fight go home. The newly chosen Taliban "leader" has a payroll he must meet. The opium proceeds cover that payroll!

President Obama is our Commander-in-Chief, the civilian boss in charge of our ribbon shirts, but his military bureaucrats, and the retired cable news talking heads are all misreading and misleading the war.

The Wall Street Journal recently in an article:

"White House officials familiar with deliberations said that while some elements of the Taliban were inclined to harbor al Qaeda, which operated freely in Afghanistan through 2001, other members were focused on Afghanistan's internal politics and much less likely to support the international terror group."

Oh! The Taliban is more interested in securing seats on the local neighbor hooded school boards. Get reel.

The Taliban differs from al Qaeda in one respect. Taliban are criminal drug dealers hiding behind religion and oppressing the local people they believe is the key to continuing success in controlling the opium / heroin, whereas Al Qaeda smuggles heroin to fund senseless political attacks throughout their region, and to plan another 9/11 which they cannot accomplish without millions of dollars swapped with Goldman Sachs Laundromat.

A few years ago a Taliban leader, Mullah Omar came to Texas. The official reason for the "trip" was to meet with Texas oil barons to discuss an oil or gas pipe line. That was the cover. The real reason was to have lengthy conversations on throw away cell phones purchased in WalMart, with Mexican and Columbian Cartel officials about the details for shipping refined heroin over here instead of tell tale smelly opium, and paying a higher price. The Columbian Cartels got into the act because the Mexicans felt no one would suspect that heroin originating in far a way Afghanistan would be round-about smuggled into South America.

In fact, Fascist Bureaucracy Ink taps every telephone in America, but those conversations, on throw away cell phones were missed!

We don't need to build an Afghanistan army. The unaligned unofficial Afghani militias know how to fight.

With a little structure and dollar support at the bottom, at the farm level, the Afghani's will protect themselves. Abraham Lincoln established a sea embargo to win the Civil War. Without supplies by ship from Europe, the Confederate Army was doomed.

Our troops get killed on border patrols between Pakistan and Afghanistan to protect our way of life across the ocean. Yet a stone's throw away, Mother Nature's opium is grown for the criminal and international terrorist's gain? How can our military be so dumb as to allow this to go on, creating millions of terrorist jihad dollars?

The only thing going across that Pakistan / Afghanistan border are paid fighters and convoys of drug smugglers hauling their cargo. The Afghan opium trade is key to everything happening there!

We own the opium and that country is ours to develop as another favored nation and great trading partner from that part of the world. Opium control means renegade Taliban, al Qaeda terrorists, and warlords are on the road again. Skedaddled or killed.

(I like the idea of not killing anybody.)

The White House failure to respond to this openly published letter will lead to loss of American lives, and seal the possibility of Barack Obama being reelected to a 2nd term in our Highest office. As the person who created the Vehicle for World Peace, I can promise The White House that much. My presidential candidacy is not the issue here, winning Afghanistan is.

The opium production and our clear ability to control that opium, is the only issue.

Our guys must begin digging foxholes in every opium field, making CIA Cash In Advance deals with the Afghanis that we are purchasing their opium crop for top dollar, in raw opium form. The farmers don't have to brew the black opium milked from the plants into a dangerous snowy heroin powder, so they are poppy plentiful, an ounce or two for the house, compliments of us.

Raw opium isn't dangerous. You won't kill yourself smoking opium the way you can so easily overdose from a heroin syringe, so we want their whole crop raw, just like unrefined brown sugar, and we will pay the refined opium heroin price which is similar to tacking on an additional 65 cents to a bushel of Iowa corn.

The war momentum will immediately shift! Instead of Taliban's "freedom fighters" picking us off every other day as we patrol the dangerous Afghanistan border, we will occupy the opium poppy fields and wait for Taliban to show up, our invited, come-and-get-us guests.

The key to Afghan quality of life for Taliban, thugs without a country when we defeat them, to them shipping their kids off to the Ivy League is based on who gets to stash the cash from Afghanistan's opium crop.

Would Karzai and his drug dealing family in Kabul be participants? How could they not be in for a slice of the action. The Afghanistan drug lords have lobbyists.

At the same time, on the diplomatic front we ought to push to reunite Pakistan with India. This will initiate a total eviction of Taliban by the Pakistani people. For Pakistan, rejoining India means freedom, food, jobs, education, and a better life. Only their military bureaucrats are opposed to this idea, and their minds could be changed with a passport, an SUV, and forty acre guarantee in Montana.

Instead of knee jerk reactions to my "Hunt For The Red October" reference to "Montana," just get creative and plant that idea in their newspapers above the fold! Now is the time to wag the Pakistan India dog!

Sad, these policies, purchasing Afghanistan's opium, piecing off the Pak military, and reuniting Pakistan with India may be too progressive for president Obama, and for his Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clintstone, but maybe not.

Certainly wagging this Pakistan-India dog will be incentive for the Paks to evict the Taliban and that is what we want! The Paks have nothing going for them under the Taliban gun.

Don't you know originally Taliban bribed the Pak military for long-term safe journey with the opium money. That is how Taliban established their foothold in Pakistan! Opium money! President Obama is surrounded by bureaucrats who wouldn't know the scent of an opium house were they standing at the door.

Many Taliban soldiers will change colors of their turbans and meld into the crowd as soon as they understand the opium harvest has been taken away from them. It isn't about religion, or the neighbor hooded school board, or how many times a day you pray to Big Al (Allah to you), it is about the opium / heroin and millions of dollars in cash! You can eat three hot meals a day in the streets of Mumbai for total 60 - 75 cents plus 25 cents for a couple hookahs full. One million dollars = one million days divided by x number of Taliban soldiers.

In Afghanistan, we need to get busy, prepare the fields, create comfortable foxholes on every poppy acre, booby trap the brush surrounding with a wide safe swath to the farmhouse, and make it clear to the farmers, by CIA shelling out Cash In Advance, we are purchasing their whole raw opium crop but paying top refined heroin price, so the farmers are with us! This is a super incentive for the farmers. Less work more money.

Taliban, Al Qaeda and warlords will have to exit their caves and cross the poppy fields instead of picking us off with remotely detonated roadside attacks. Retired military will be opposed to this poppy war, but hard pressed to tell you why because they support that opium trade just the way it is.

We are purchasing the Afghanistan poppy crop, and negotiating fair and square and in advance how much sticky black sap can be extrapolated from each plant. CIA stands for Cash In Advance but these cash negotiations are a job for our enlisted soldiers in the field - to negotiate with the farms where they are dug in, not a job for CIA officers who are from Kabul. The CIA role is to safely deliver the money!

The plants, ripening by day, are the draw for Taliban, al Qaeda and warlords to show, the only way for them to go, taking on our troops in the poppy fields where we will defeat them!

When they come down the yellow brick Afghanistan trails we can sting them from above. A couple drone attacks will turn them all around in their tracks. No opium harvest for them no paychecks.

The extra virgin first milk is scheduled to start the day after tomorrow. Our enemies know that. The farmers are out of the picture as they are already paid in advance. At 4:00 a.m. we begin snipping every plant two inches above ground with two handle bush trimmers, chop chop, just like that. At dawn, we start stuffing wood chippers and spread the soil with the chopped up results to fertilize next year's crop.

So good-bye Taliban grunt, and don't step on any land mines going home.

A couple million heroin addicts in Europe will be going cold turkey! The Mexican and Columbian drug cartels will be out of heroin, and lose hundreds of millions of criminal dollars in projected sales.

Regardless the Washington DC bureaucrats will be viciously against this operation. The status quo is how the rigid government's bureaucrats want to go.

But with a cash infusion at the farm level, Afghanistan will begin to flourish. The Afghani people will start rebuilding their own country, without corruption from above, roads and schools decided by tribal leaders in the farm districts, with a helping hand from us.

We must also purchase their whole marijuana and hashish crop, and bring each of the harvests to USA, to California and other states where medicinal marijuana is legal for medicinal purposes, else we run the risk that that crop, too becomes an income for the terrorists. Afghani marijuana is the most potent in the world, best for relief of anxiety besides chemotherapy's side effects.

Regardless what the president's surrounding bureaucrat advisors say, we occupy the opium fields, purchase the whole crop, and all the heroin sold every day in our country will dry up! Young kids in poor neighborhoods will not become addicted to heroin.

Don't we want that? The opium / heroin dry up is guaranteed because all of the other countries where opium grows, they only have planted enough for their own home land and neighboring clientele.

The opium pays al Qaeda's world salary. But who controls the opium wins the terrorist war, world wide! The poppy strategy expressed on this page will accomplish our mission! Those opposed want things the way they are. Follow the money. In the event we ignore the terrorist's cash cow, and leave, al Qaeda, opium rich, will have the funds to execute all of their murderous plans. Wasn't the twin towers brought down and their Pentagon attack enough! Obama inherited that issue! The opium trade paid for the 9/11 tragedy, not bin Laden's personal millions! We cannot risk allowing 9 / 11 to repeat. We cannot!

Ignoring what I say guarantees Obama is a one term president.

michaelslevinson.com

The CIA has had all kinds of people on the payroll since the 1940s, including Suharto of Indonesia, the Shah of Iran and Pinochet in Chile. During the Cold War, it would subsidize just about anyone or anything, as long as they were anti-Communist.

Now they are subsidizing anyone who is anti-Islamofascist. As in the Cold War, a number of people on "our side" are shit in shoes, more liabilities than assets.

"a Taliban-run Afghanistan would be an even worse exporter of drugs and violence than it is now"


you might have something there with the violence part, but it is a fact that before the US invasion, the Taliban had succeeded in essentially shutting down the heroin industry. since the US invasion, Afghanistan has become the worst heroin exporter in the world, supplying 80% of the world's heroin.

We have got an economic mess and runaway health cost, it is time to ditch the war. Our Afghan war is making corrupt warlords rich. Imagine getting in bed with drug growers and dealers. It is cheaper to run a war using drones