Afghanistan's Drug Problem

[marct]

Guess we ought to be serving warrants on the major distillers for those 75k deaths caused annually by alcohol.

Poppy growing is an issue and a problem, but to blame the growers for the deaths at the other end of the supply chain seems to overlook a whole lot of involvement by people who are at least as culpable, or more so. Blowing that out of proportion is not a way to arrive at effective policy.

Oh boy...

... forget it

Why forget it? You are making a claim that is, basically, indefensible unless you are willing to extend it to other "causes" of death in the US. Would you make the same claim against the use of force in securing oil fields even though there are 40,000+ deaths per year due to car accidents in the US?

Let's go back to another component of your argument that you made earlier:

My position is that it is not with the restrictions placed on the US and Brit armies in Afghanistan. Rules of engagement and (horrifyingly) increasingly attitudes of officers (some displayed around here) which are more suited to work with the Peacecorps than with an army at war.

Then inexplicably the US have appeared to forgotten the simple lesson they learned in Vietnam - where a segment of their Viet Cong enemy were 'farmers by day, soldiers by night'. (If they have not forgotten then they have no #*!# idea how to deal with that)

This comes back to the need - IMHO - to use proxies who can fight by the same lack of rules as the Taliban. Use of such tactics or methods would not be possible for use by US or Brit forces. (Nor would - most likely - the US Congress allow such proxies to kill in the name of the US)

.

First off, the socio-technical context of Afghanistan is quite different from that of Vietnam. I truly doubt that the "lessons" have been forgotten. Instead, I would argue that the "solutions" have been rendered impossible - and don't forget that the US lost Vietnam. Even if we draw on the lessons of Malasia, which could be argued as a limited "win", those solutions are still impossible in the current socio-technical regime.

Two points here:

1. Force levels
2. International law

ISAF does not, and is unlikely ever to have, sufficient force levels to actually monitor down to the village level. That was why this silliness with VSO was created. Second, international law precludes using overt proxies to commit actions that are chargable as war crimes. Look at the Canadian experience with handing over detainees to the Afghan government and where that left the CF.

Cheers,

Marc