I did see an interview of Rahm Emmanual in which he stated that the big issue in the review was the viability of the central government? I am seeing more parallels with the quagmire in Vietnam where our troops were very effective in the field, but we could not "win" because the government we were supporting was corrupt an ineffective. To me the real question is whether we need to stay awhile to help Pakistan by keeping it's insurgents from using Afghanistan as a safe haven. And, in the meantime, help ameliorate some of the desperate conditions arising from our presence. Any chance of real sucess is long gone. We need to get our troops out of that part of the world in order to deprive the terrorists of a recruitment tool.

I also believe we need to get our troops out of the region ASAP, but, have been convinced by Fareed Zakaria that leaving quickly would leave a vacuum that would not be in our best interest. Since the central government is hopelessly corrupt and Afghanistan has been a confederation of tribes for all of recorded history, we should help create a strong confederation of tribes and then get out.

I think the fulcrum sentence here is "... which was totally and irresponsibly neglected by the Bush team and which Obama is now only starting to correct."

The fact is that Obama has inherited a miserably-played hand from Bush. There's another, more important card game at the next table marked Pakistan, with higher stakes. One could make a compelling argument to fold this game in Afghanistan to concentrate on Pakistan, while we still have money to play with.

To argue that we should or should not be there bears no weight at this time. We ARE there. It doesn't even matter who the next president of Afganistan may be. What matters is our people, our troops. They need the help NOW. Obama can bring 'em all home tomorrow. But in the meantime get some backup there as soon as possible. Don't worry about whose fault it is now, worry about our young men and women until we get 'em home.

"Why is he asking for what he realizes he can't get-and predicting mission failure if he doesn't get them?"

Because he is a known liar. (See Krakauer's new book: "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman.")

November 9, 2009. Cyberspace @ The Daily Beast

I dedicate this post to all of those decent people who seek a rational sensible approach to defeating the Taliiban and al Qaeda, the reason we went into Afghanistan.

This is an open letter to Leslie Gelb, his coterie, and president Obama, too, his, The Daily Beast watchers, and of course the readers and posters @ this page.

Here is the Afghanistan Solution, the strategy we need, what we must do, how to do it, and why, and what I, an independent candidate for president am going to do upon election to our highest office, a happenstance that cannot be ruled out. The American people are definitely going to find out when I wrote this essay and where I posted it.

How the American people are going to find out is "seek writ" media strategy me v. domestic counter counter intelligence volks who have dogged my life more than 40 years. I am duty bound not to release how I am going to get my nme in front of all the American people. You will surely read about it.

In the event president Obama decides to withdraw from Afghanistan, it will be on behalf of his reelection, not because it was or is the smart thing to do. Upon my election we will be immediately going back to Afghanistan, redeploying for reasons you can deduct upon reading what follows.

Now to the Afghani solution:

We adopt this opium poppy strategy, explained below, or we risk another terrorist attack in America, rivalng the 9 / 11 attack. Were that the only issue on the table it would be good enough reason for your close attention! White House officials involved in the ongoing Afghanistan deliberations should carefully consider what is here revealed!

The key to winning Afghanistan and Pakistan, to dissolving al Qaeda and Taliban, is controlling the opium they meticulously grow. On this planet, world wide, opium is the grand poppa of all opiates. That dirt-cheap heroin readily bought every day on the streets of Manhattan and Washington DC, on the streets of Kabul, and by the barrack gates where our tropps are billited, began it's life a sleepy Pashtun poppy, milked in Afghanistan, oceans away.

That 17% pure 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 rich 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 are apt to paint them. The farmers grow the highest quality most potent opium that yields the most heroin, world wide! Similar to our Iowa farmer's ability to grow bountiful crops of corn.

Bill Gates must marvel at their 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 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 and suburban neighborhoods and school yards.

For the cartels this wholesale heroin represents billions of dollars in retail business. Billions of underground criminal, and terrorist dollars, our school yards one of their retail outlets!

The key to stuffing Taliban and al Qaeda, eradicating all of their corruption of Afghanistan, is to choke the opium supply 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.

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, more on the way and the opium poppy stratgegy carefully explained here will SAVE MOST OF THEIR LIVES.

Surely, you, the reader, 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 lives lost or blood shed.

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

For the international criminal drug cartels the opium / heroin wholesale / retail is between 500 and 600 billion illigitimate unwashed tax free dollars per annum!

Without the opium / heroin trade, al Qaeda and Taliban would be decimated. The Western Hemisphere drug cartels would lose their hundreds of billions of dollars and would be facing their own recession. Street corner drug dealers would be signing up for unemployment checks. 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.

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 Afghani 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 the days smoking the black Afghani hashish. No food no money no fight. The newly chosen Taliban "leader" has a payroll he must meet. The opium proceeds cover that payroll!

Mr President Obama is our Commander-in-Chief, the civilian boss in charge of our ribbon shirts, but General Stanley McChrystal and his military bureaucrats, besides Gelb and his gang, and all the retired cable news talking heads grousing every day are all misreading and misleading the Afghanistan war.

The Wall Street Journal article: Top Troop Request Exceeds 60,000 by Peter Spiegal and Yochi Dreazen stated,

"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? Hardly! their Afghanistan infrastructure has one purpose: controlling the opium poppy after the harvest!

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 their continuing success in controlling the opium / heroin, whereas Al Qaeda smuggles heroin to fund sensless political attacks throughout their region, and to plan another 9/11 which cannot be accomplished without many millions of dollars.

A few years ago a Taliban leader came to Texas. Whatever the official reason for the "trip," talks about a potential oil pipe line, the real reason was to have some lengthy conversations on a throw away cell phone with Mexican and Columbian Cartel officials about shipping refined heroin instead of tell tale smelly opium. The Columbians got into the act because no one would suspect heroin originating in far a way Afghanistan would be round-about smuggled into South America, and from there, north.

The oil pipe line talks were a hoax. The Taliban were hear to solidify the opium / heroin pipeline, moolah for the mullah.

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

With a little strucure and dollar support at the bottom, at the farm level, the Afghani people 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 is key to everything happening there!

We own the opium and the country is ours. Free. 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 open 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 you that much for sure. But I am not the issue here, only what "eye" say is the issue.

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

Our guys must begin digging foxholes in every opium field, making Cash In Advance deals CIA with the Afghanis we are purchasing their opium crop for top dollar, in raw opium form. The farmers don't have to brew the black sap into a dangerous snowy heroin powder, so they are poppy plentiful, an ounce or two included 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 unefined 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 guests for a steel jacket lunch.

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

Would that be Karzai and his drug dealing family in Kabul? At the same time, on the diplomatic front we ought to push to reunite Pakistan with India. This will initiate an 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 against this idea, and their minds could be changed with a passport, an SUV, and a forty acre guarantee in Montana.

Instead of knee jerk reactions to my The Hunt For The Red October reference to 'Montana," just get creative and plant that idea in Pakistan newspapers! 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 the president, and for his Secretary of State Hillary Clintstone, too, 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 the Taliban bribed the Pak military for long-term safe journey with the opium money. That is how they established their foothold in Pakistan! Opium money! Too bad our President 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 realize 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! Seeing as you can eat three hot meals a day in the streets of Mumbai for less than a dollar, one million dollars = one million days divided by x number of Taliban grunts.

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! 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 their 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 their poppy crop, and negotiating fair and square and in advance how much sticky black sap can be extrapolated from each plant. Though I pun CIA as standing for Cash In Advance this is a job for our enlisted soldiers in the field to negotiate with the farms where they are dug in, not CIA officers who are from Kabul, not living on the farms in foxholes!

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 road we can sting them from above. A couple drone attacks will turn them all around in their tracks. No opium no paychecks.

The extra virgin first milk is scheduled to start 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 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 hasish crop, and either sell that to the shops in Amsterdam or bring each of the harvests to USA for medicinal purposes. or 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 chemotherapy's side effects.

Regardless what Obama's surrounding bureaucrats 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? Don't you? 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 above poppy strategy will accomplish our mission! Those opposed want things the way they are. Follow the money, Mr President. 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 for you! You inherited that issue! The opium trade paid for the 9/11 tragedy! We cannot risk allowing that to repeat. We cannot!

Unless Obama wants it guaranteed before the end of his first year that he is a lame duck one term president, then ignore what eye say.

A note to my The Daily Beast friends. I'm remodeling my page in cyberspace, taking my internet candidacy to the next level, getting ready to add a forum for commentary. Have a pre limb look: michaelslevinson.com/94_turquoise

candidate for president

michaelslevinson.com

=Gelb's comments reflect a rigorous analysis of the facts of life in Afghanistan and a brutal honesty regarding the state of the U.S. military. The thrust of his thesis is that our discussion needs to focus not so much on what should be done but what can be done, given the realities on the ground over there and the parlous state of our military--not to mention
the uncertain status of our still-wounded economy.
=In net, the American people need to be told that there are limits, even for "the most powerful nation on earth,"on what we can hope to accomplish. And, we must not only set goals
but establish priorities.
=It will take real courage for President Obama to admit this
harsh reality. Remember what happened to the last president who told us we couldn't have it all? He was sent back to his peanut farm in Georgia after one term.

With all this talk about McChrystal's math being off and his motives being political, everyone is dancing around the truth here. What are they trying to say? What are McChrystal's real motives supposed to be? What it comes down to is that generals are not really soldiers and they shouldn't be regarded as such by the press. They're pols, bought and paid for by a particular lobby: defense. This was true in the Bush years, and it's equally true today. So the next time you hear one of these starred-up guys speak, remember, nobody advances beyond a certain rank, or gains a certain amount of visibility, within an institution like the Pentagon, without toting the coporate barge and lifting the corporate bale. He's a shill. That's what they're all saying. And Obama should take his own advice and listen to the people on Afghanistan: it's a garbage hole, it'll always be a garbage hole, and we're wasting our time, and the lives of real soldiers, by staying there. BOKO

P.S. To all you national security nuts, the terrorists are already in Chechnya, Sudan, Somalia....where does it end. Maybe terrorism is just the representation of chaos in a globalized system of capital and control, an element of reality that can never be gotten rid of no matter how hard we try or how much 'reality-TV' we watch. Huh? Could that be it?

The cut and run liberals used every trick in the book to try to convince us that Iraq was unwinnable. Now they're doing the same with Afghan. If we're not willing to do what it takes to win we need to get out but suggesting we can't win is ridiculous. Figure out how it can be done first and THEN assess whether it's worth it.

Leslie Gelb told Hillary Clinton recently that Iran will emerge as a US ally in the Middle East. I agree with him - - provided Israel does not set off an insane war - -and surely Iranian help with achieving stability in Afghanistan should be sought openly. McChrystal will squander hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars if he gets his way.

If "Experts" are debating Afghanistan,

and they can't come to a consensus,
how could the rest of us possibly come to any conclusion ?

Who are we supposed to believe ?

How about the British and former Soviets for starters.

sophia5: The Soviets invaded in order to quell Islamic militancy that they feared would infect the USSR and help to bring about its collapse. Instead, they only made things worse, and brought on the collapse. Every 1000 US troops sent to Afghanistan will cost $1 billion per year! Idiocy of the first degree.

Here's some loser who I'm guessing never had the courage to put on the uniform and go out there and simply defend his country. Now we have to listen to him tell us how to win a war. Of course because of his vast knowledge reading, I'm guessing, on warring situations, he now is a desk expert on how to win a war. What a fuc_ing loser.

I'd be more interested in hearing this loser's story of why he failed to dawn the uniform of this country and go out there and fight for it, instead of criticizing a general for trying to win a war.

It's not that hard. Mr. Expert tell the President to give the general the troops necessary to win the war, or Mr. President, put your tail between you legs, get out of the war, and bring the troops home.

LH Gelb's blog gave me pause. The comments scare me. The neo-cons are dragging out the excuses they used to blame the US's liberals, JFK & LBJ for the USA's loss of the war in 'Nam. Didn't Tricky Dick & Kissinger take the US troops out of 'Nam. The dithering duo said that they were Viet Namizing the war as Lester Lanan's Palm Beach band played a down tempo version of the hit from the start of the Korean war, "Bug Out Boogie".
The radical liberals are busy showing that Afganistan is a lost cause & warning Prez Obama that he'll be the 21st century's 2d failed war president & a 1 term wonder if he sends more troops & money to Afghinastan.
The acrimony between progressives & neo-cons is as thick as 50 weight motor oil that has beem stored outside for 30 days at -15, f temperatures.
Wierd Al will soon have a hit, "Polarization Polka". I can't wait to hear its lyrics. Perhaps, I'll be lucky & die before the US pulls out of the Middle East.
The USA is in for a 15 year constant, 24/7, pier 6 brawl after the troops pull out of the Middle East.

Expect the president to send at least 250 thousand more troops to Afghanistan. They will be in place before 2012. He is a strong friend of the war-hawks and profiteers but keeps a low profile. Afghanistan will be used as a corridor to invade Russia and China. The American army will take Moscow and Beijing in 30 days, and the dream of one government, with its central headquarters in the White House, will become a reality.