Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
And these huge problems would be?
To begin with, you're talking about 50% of Afghanistan's GDP and the primary source of income for very many regular Afghans. People have to eat and feed their families - if you destroy their means to do that, what do you think they'll do? You can't kill half a nation's economy and expect positive effects from that - even assuming it were possible to do so.

Secondly, the scale of poppy cultivation is vast. Diverting resources to really try to destroy all the crops would negatively impact every other effort in Afghanistan because the resources required would be so large. We don't have the resources to do everything we might like to do in Afghanistan, so we must make priorities.

Third, it's a counterproductive COA, as are most which try to impose our own values on other people. We're not in Afghanistan to fight a drug war and that goal is not worth spilling our soldier's blood for, especially since I don't think there's been a single case where crop eradication was successful.