Basis of the Afghanistan War

E-mail to Congress:

EIN News says, "U.S. Aid Going to Afghanistan Partners. The Pentagon is pouring millions of dollars into equipment and training for its smaller partner nations in the Afghanistan war, a new effort that could encourage some countries not to abandon the increasingly unpopular conflict. (seattlepi.com)".

This is what happens when you have a dirty job and you don't want to do it yourself. You hire somebody else to do it, if you have the money. The US doesn't have the money. We are deeply in debt and continue to increase our debt through budget deficit financing.

Let's consider again why we are in this Afghanistan war. We say we are not nation building. Fine, we will take it that. We also say we are protecting ourselves from terrorists by moving the operation abroad rather than trying to control them in the US. While that sounds good on the surface, it is not necessary to have ground forces to do that job. Through a combination of intelligence and technical observations from satellites and other means, we can easily pick out training camps or the physical locations of other operations detrimental to the US, and bomb the hell out of them. That's why we have an air force. If we can't do this with conventional explosives, let's develop a nice compact atomic bomb that will do the job. We need to forget the reticence to use atomic explosives, because of promises to other countries that we would not do so. Subsequent developments of atomic explosives in many countries of the world have made this promise obsolete. We need to maintain superiority in atomic weaponry. One of the best ways to do this is to establish small atomic weapons to do specific jobs without too much ancillary killing of citizenry.

If one wants to deceive himself into thinking that our military presence in Afghanistan is favorable to the Afghanistan people, we need to think again. Perhaps we think we are protecting the Afghanistan people from the Taliban. It should not be our business to do that, if the people want the Taliban. Consider also that Afghanistan is a great area for production of poppies, leading to heroin, which has great acceptance on the world market. This is a substantial portion of the Afghanistan GDP, and it is well known that the US desires to wipe it out. If you were an Afghanistan citizen, would you welcome a foreign military operation, whose intention is to reduce your standard a living from an already poor state? If we are there to eliminate poppy production, let's be clear about it and maximize our use of herbicides to do so. We are likely in this operation to reap the wrath of the Afghanistan people, but so be it.

I have mixed feelings on drug use. There will always be individuals who will choose that route, but most will not. The Dutch program works on that basis. It is not possible to stamp out drug use, but it is also not desirable to promote it. A Mexican official has said that it is not Mexico's fault that the US desires marijuana. If the market were not there, there would be no need to produce it. I believe our government should spend considerably less time and money on controlling the influx of drugs and also on rehabilitation of drug addicts. Most addicts are there because they took a risk and failed. It is not the responsibility of the remaining public to bail them out of their situation. As unemployment remains high, there will likely be a greater increase in drug addiction, because these people have nothing else to do. Whether we support them as unemployed or as drug addicts makes little difference economically. In either case, they are nonproductive.