No kidding , what a sorry piece.

Wars are always fought for economic reasons, and this one, bleeding our treasure, one million dollars per year for each additional soldier - 30 billion a year total for the proposed surge, is killing our potential for economic recovery.

We don't have any "military officers who are strategic leaders." There aren't any Eisenhowers, Bradleys or Pattons in our military establishment. We only have military bureaucrats who are comfortable with the military bureaucracy that is their way of job security life.

I am a candidate for president of United States. The following strategy is the best holiday gift we could give to our troops. They would be safer, and we would win! Wiothout this program / startegy we will not!

The words, "Counter terrorism, counter insurgency, nation building" are the current language of bureaucracy. In Vietnam the key word, over and over, was "logistics." The idea behind the surge, that we will give the Afghan people / government time to develop their own security forces sounds like deja South Vietnam all over again.

Dan Rather appeared on MSNBC Rachel Maddow a few months ago. He said the main problems in Afghanistan, not in order of importance were the total government corruption of the "government" in Kabul, and the opium production, which is the main rural farm "product." Dan Rather remarked some of the opium money went to fund our enemies, the insurgent Taliban seeking to drive us out of Afghanistan.

Is war the game on Obama's table? Chess is the game. There is no peace resembles the plane! The way to take out the people who are trying to kill us in that theater is via drones. Drones can fly for hours without need for refueling. They are inexpensive to build. They have super live cameras so they can clearly see the enemy as a bull's eye target and the pilots operate a joy stick a half a world away.

They could be made to fly practically silent. I suspect we have the photo technology for the drones to have a "see in the dark" capability. In the event one could be shot down with a Sam missile from the ground, no one gets killed.

But there are not enough drones! Nor are there enough pilots because the military bureaucracy only allows fighter pilots to operate the drones when there are easily a half million teen age master computer game players in America who could do as well, very possibly better! Actually the other services, the army and navy are also using drones, and training younger non-flyers to operate them, but there is still a shortage.

With a simulation program a 17 years old civilian game master, from his bedroom computer, could learn to perfectly land and take off a drone in two days flat. The 17 yr. old computer game master could fly the drone target and wipe out enemies all day long!

Killing someone is something the drone pilot would have to live with. When we have a firing squad, only one of the shooters has a bullet. The others on the firing line have blanks, so no one knows who actually killed the guilty convicted party.

Apply the same principal to the drones. Hooked in via Internet, we could have, all over America, game masters operating the drones after one gamester actually takes the drone off and they are airborne. Then, with enough of the drones, a thousand, not a hundred, we can patrol every road and guard the treacherous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The president of United States could ORDER every plane manufacturer to build drones 24 / 7!

The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is treacherous for our troops on the ground, but for a drone the playing field is leveled. It stands to reason anyone crossing that border, either way, from Afghanistan to Pakistan is smuggling drugs, or heading to Afghanistan to kill Americans. With near silent flying drones we take them all out!

Every road going from where our troops are stationed into the rural areas can be monitored from above and we can pick off one or two Taliban at a time. The word would spread amongst the Taliban soldiers, who fight for a payroll that at any time they can be killed, from above. The Taliban enemy would be pinned down so we can occupy all of the opium poppy fields, pay for the crop and put the Taliban out of business. It would not be long before Taliban would cease to exist. With enough drones anyone and every single Taliban recruit who left Pakistan for Afghanistan would not return home.

A president who is a leader would tell the military that that is what we are going to do. Our air force military is opposed to this solution because they only want experienced fighter pilots operating their drones, nor are they pushing to order more drones demanding, when in fact, via remote a half a world away the experienced air force fighter pilots are really just playing a computer game for real.

With 20 different civilian kids (master gamesters) operating each of the drones, the actual kid whose fire button fired would not be known. The kills would be a "we," not a "me." That's better, easier for our kids to absorb and live with.

What I or any other person seriously intending on becoming the next president of United States sees or plans is a notable issue, worthy of your consideration.

Besides the potential for development or pipe line transportation of natural resources, like natural gas and oil, the other issue is the Afghanistan economic monopoly of the world's opium poppy which is distilled into heroin right on the farm! That is the only issue, driving the everyday fighting, not the future developments of natural resources!

Every time you pull up at a Stop and Go in America, to get gas, or a coffee, or cigarettes, outside a few feet away from the door someone is hanging out. That person is dealing crack from Columbia, or heroin, from opium poppy grown in Afghanistan. Control of that opium inspires and funds the Taliban. The opium / heroin sold in America, one million $2 bags a day, funds the Taliban. They pay their troops $250 - $300 per month. Not jihad.

This unremarked criminal drug harmony is taking place from sea to shining sea. When Barky Obama's oldest daughter comes home from school with an ever so slight droop in her eyes, from a morning snort with one of her friends, then maybe our president will get wise!

When more than one million preteen and early teenagers are getting into heroin, telling themselves, "I'm in control, I only use twice a week," then America will begin to see again the flowering of out-of-control crime someone bound to the drug is willing to commit, to get their drug. The unnecessary mayhem we might soon be facing will be brought on by ignoring the real issue, which is the opium poppy.

We can occupy all the poppy fields, and pay the farmers cash in advance (CIA). That must be our policy! This occupation can take place, without shooting, over a ten day period. In his speech, President gave one line to the "drug trade."

We adopt this opium poppy strategy, as explained, or we risk another terrorist attack in America, rivalng the 9 / 11 attack, because the money needed to make another attack will come from the sale of the opium / heroin around the world. Should such an attack take place in the midst of natural resource developments, then what?

Were a potential attack, sponsored by the proceeds of their opium / heroin distribution, the only issue on the table it would be good enough reason for your close attention! The heroin being sold on every street corner will continue as long as our president casts a blind eye on the real enemy.

The key to winning Afghanistan and Pakistan, to dissolving al Qaeda and Taliban, is controlling the opium the Afghanis 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 barracks' gates where our troops are billeted, began its 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! That is the land we need to occupy!

They Afghanis 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.

They also grow the most potent marijuana on the planet. The Afghanistan farmers' capability is similar to our Iowa farmer's ability to grow bountiful crops of corn which our farmers export world wide. Our farmers get a much better deal for their corn than the Afghani farmers get for their crop of opium poppy.

Bill Gates must marvel at their opium / heroin market share. Monopoly was his goal, too!

The poppy crop is 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 Afghanistan and all the neighboring countries, including all of the Western Hemisphere cartels and subtle European drug dealerships.

The opium / heroin must be our focus. Why does our government fail to see this? Why does our military allow the Afghani convoys carrying tons of heroin to pass the checkpoints? Who is paid off?

The heroin lifeblood for terrorists and drug cartels is smuggled out of Afghanistan, throughout Europe, with tons, tons going by plane and ship to South America where, repackaged, the heroin's origin is disguised so no one gets wise; and from there, routed to Mexican cartels, and from Mexico, into United States, 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 schoolyards only one of the cartel's retail outlets! The Mexican dealers, sent to every city by the cartels are told to insure there aren't any shootings over distributorship territory, as they are quietly building a repeat steady business. Because they have a monopoly on the heroin they can carefully develop their sales force of unemployed school dropouts which is what they are doing.

Knowing the destination for much of the heroin is America, why does our military ignore the convoys of trucks laden with heroin and allow them to pass? Why not seize the truckloads of duffels, slice them open and dump the contents to blow in the wind? The answer is dollars in lots of pockets, regardless of turban or uniform!

We could take these convoys out from above with the drones. Why aren't these orders being given.

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 Colombian jungle to get at the cocaine plantations. That is not happening. But we do have 68,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan, 30,000 more on the way and the opium poppy strategy carefully explained here will save most of their lives.

Surely, we can agree we 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" billeted over the border, in Pakistan; and money for the families of al Qaeda's suicide bombers throughout the Middle East.

For the international criminal drug cartels the Afghanistan opium / heroin wholesale / retail is between 500 and 600 billion illegitimate unwashed tax free dollars year in and year out!

Without the opium / heroin trade, al Qaeda and Taliban operations 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. With ten thousand off road quad cab American trucks, manned by four armed "volunteer" Americans getting $28 per hour, the trucks, each equipped with CB radios, binoculars and police radar guns, could seal all of Iraq's borders. Oil by the truck tanker full would not be "smuggled " out to Syria, to fund the insurgents, and the border between Iraq and Iran would be sealed, so suicide bombers and IED devices would not be smuggled in as is a daily event today.

In Afghanistan, Taliban also controls all of the roads, so every land patrol is a potential death drive, a wasting of our blood and treasure! The opium dollar is fueling both the war and the Taliban structure, enabling them to strike from any roadside at will! We spend one million dollars on a huge truck to sweep the road for buried bombs, and the Taliban spends ten dollars on the remote detonator device, perhaps an additional $20 on the explosives that at least disable the truck.

The numbers are way in their favor. We are spending a thousand times more money so even winning we lose!

Afghanistan is a poor country with a rich culture. Whoever of the warlords 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" in Pakistan has a payroll he must meet. The opium proceeds cover the Taliban payroll!

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

Wars are fought for economic reasons. The poppy fields fuel criminal enterprises worldwide. Control the poppy fields and all the criminal activities world wide are thwarted!

A recent 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 during and 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, so they can send their kids to Ivy League schools, whereas Al Qaeda smuggles heroin to fund senseless political attacks throughout the Middle East, 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 or gas pipe lines, another reason was to have some lengthy conversations on throw away cell phones 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 faraway Afghanistan would be round-about smuggled into South America, and from there, north to Mexico and then into USA.

In that sense, the oil pipeline talks were a cover. The Taliban came to Texas to solidify the opium / heroin pipeline. Moolah for the mullah.

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 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 can eliminate all the border travel with 24 / 7 invincible drones from above!

We own the opium and control the poppy fields and the whole country is ours. We don't need the roads. We can resupply our troops dug in with night time helicopter delivery!

Opium control by us means renegade Taliban, al Qaeda terrorists, and warlords are on the road again. Skedaddled or killed.

(I like the idea of not killing anybody.)

Though I am an insurgent candidate for president and bring to the table a Vehicle for World Peace, my candidacy is not the issue; 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, while paying them rent for digging our fox holes on the edges of their poppy fields.
The farmers won'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 opium 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! Once we are digging in on the poppy fields, everything changes because without the proceeds from smuggling the heroin, the Taliban will whither away!

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 should they dare, 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 Ivy League schools 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? As soon as we instigate the above strategy, Karzai and his government officials will protest, because they also benefit from the opium / heroin smuggling and sales.

At the same time, on the diplomatic front we ought to push to reunite Pakistan with India. This will initiate a further eviction of Taliban by the Pakistani people. For Pakistan, rejoining India means freedom, food, jobs, education, and a better life. Only the Pakistani 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 Red October" reference to "Montana," just get creative and plant that idea in Pakistan newspapers above the fold! Now is the time to wag the Pakistan India dog! Regardless what India and Pakistan do, we need to put this idea on the table and get all the people talking about it!

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 perhaps not.%u2028

Certainly this wagging of the Pakistan-India dog will be incentive for the Paks to evict the Taliban and that is what we want to happen! 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 Allah, it is about the opium / heroin and millions of dollars in cash! Since 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 soldiers.

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

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 on roads they control. Retired military may be opposed to this poppy war, but hard pressed to explain why they support that opium trade just the way it is.

We should be purchasing the whole poppy crop, and negotiating fair and square and in advance how much sticky black sap can be extrapolated from each plant. 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 opium milking is scheduled to start tomorrow. Our enemies know that but they will be powerless! 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 millions 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, reason enough for everything we do to control the poppy fields.

Regardless bureaucrats will be viciously against this operation. The status quo is how the rigid government's bureaucrats always 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 where the poppy is grown, with a helping hand from us.

We must also purchase their whole marijuana and hashish crop, and either sell that to the shops in Amsterdam or bring each of the harvests to USA for medicinal purposes. Otherwise 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 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 the United States 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 homeland and neighboring clientele.

The opium pays al Qaeda's world salary. But who controls the opium wins the terrorist war, worldwide! 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! 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. When there are fifty-thousand street corner heroin dealers in USA earning a living dealing "smack" then what are you going to do about the new generation of criminal entrepreneurs, throw them in jail for working in a jobless economy. What will that cost? I am a candidate for president.

michaelslevinson.com

redstatebluestooge,
Thank you for proving my point....w/ classic, elite, tripe no less! Merry Christmas

My thoughts exactly, redstatebluedude. I refuse to glorify those who choose to participate in the oil and war machine.

Man 'o Man. this kind of article really brings out the sons of bitches doesn't it. But then that's how we wind up in some of these political cesspools I guess.

OOOOO00000000ooooooo: I'm a Vet. Under V. A. CARE!!! I Get Great CARE!!! But: The New Bill Will Make it Much Worse For the People that have Ins. Programs! BEACUSE THE HOSPITALS WILL BE "FULL" WITH ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. "WITH NO ROOM FOR CITIZANS!!! ( Giving Duel & Full Citizanship to people that "CAN'T Speak, read, or right, English; And hasn't given the Oath of LOYALITY to the U.S. of A.. " Aren't REAL CITIZANS!!!"

Censorship Should be un-Lawfull !

Why not women?Are you sexist?

I wish it were true, what you say about the soldiers protecting us or making America "safe." Certainly they are brave; certainly they sacrifice. But at some point Americans who furnish their young to these perpetual and foolish wars will have to awaken to the realization that they are being used and manipulated. There is no way the military can make us "safe" by invading and occupying countries from which the enemy (Al Qaeda) can easily move--indeed, all Al Qaeda needs is the internet and a few temporary locations to gather. A comment further above describes the plight of blue collar folks who gravitate toward the military--and for understandable reasons, especially in these economic times. But it is precisely blue collar folks like these who continue to subscribe to the Republican War on Terror--the American jihad--which has done so much to harm our own country, as well as slaughter non-combatants throughout the region. Our brave soldiers, ultimately, are doing more harm to American interests by being in these locations, and by creating an ever more infuriating footprint--which Osama Bin Laden himself declared was the ORIGINAL reason for founding Al Qaeda: to remove the US presence from the "holy land" of Saudi Arabia. We have to wise up--and I am disappointed that Obama has not taken the opportunity to educate America toward a more effective policy of dealing with the causes of terrorism. But as on so much else, it appears that he just doesn't get it.

With all due respect, archbold, people who actually served have more respect for the troops than little Ciceros like this writer.

Please consider this as you wax over his words.

And "honeyed" words at that ...

Ella, the shit that is happening out there--and to your own--is way too important to postpone for your desire for short-term, and in many cases insincere, Christmas sentiments.

Not necessarily by supporting this writer.

Leave the predictable barb about liberals aside (this has nothing to do with it), and, citing Thomas Watson, the former, legendary chairman of IBM, try to THINK.

If the rest of this "chain of command" would carry out their duty as well as the military we wouldn't have so many security problems. Instead the politicians. and some of you on here seem to want full protection from our enemies but you want everyone to do it your way. Before you make such statemnets you need to go out there and "feel" a combat area. Our troops are not just weapons, bombs and guns, or tanks. they're blood and guts people who make it possible for the rest of this nation to survive. They give arms, legs, and lives. Their families give their faith and broken hearts when these men and women are taken. So you're not talking about an organization. You're talking about real individuals who feel it when wounded and leave a big hole in our lives when they go. Treat them as such and have all the respect you can muster.

TO dirigo: No, not to anyone in in particular, just in general. I've been there too.