Farm Aid, Afghan Style, 2nd edition

About a week ago we discussed the opium based economy of Afghanistan in Farm Aid, Afghan Style. Now Robert Scheer has picked up the story in the LA Times and it's worth a read.

Why am I such a party pooper? Trust me, I desperately want to be like those happy-go-lucky folks in the red states who apparently think things are hurtling along just fine. Unfortunately, the facts keep bridling my optimism.

Take the United States' alleged great achievements in Afghanistan. Remember during the campaign how President Bush repeatedly celebrated the divinely inspired success of his administration toward turning Afghanistan into a stable democracy? "In Afghanistan, I believe that the freedom there is a gift from the Almighty," he said in the third presidential debate. "And I can't tell you how encouraged I am to see freedom on the march." As compared with Iraq, which Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" has aptly titled "Mess-O-Potamia," Afghanistan has claimed fewer American lives and taxpayer dollars, while managing to hold a presidential election since U.S. and warlord irregulars deposed the brutal Taliban regime three years ago.
........[snip]........
Well, truth is, freedom in Afghanistan continues to be on more of a stoned-out stumble than a brisk march. The Taliban has been driven from Kabul, but it still exists in the countryside, and the bulk of the country is still run, de facto, by competing warlords dependent on the opium trade --- which now accounts for 60% of the Afghan economy.

So we have a Democracy by war lords with an economy that is 60% illegal drug trade. No problem, sounds like Chicago during prohibition. So what about the Bush administration? Scheer sums it up pretty well:

Indeed, this administration came into office preoccupied by the war on drugs and indifferent to the war on terror. Before 9/11, even though Afghanistan was harboring the world's No. 1 terror suspect and his organization, the White House was so happy with the Taliban regime's drug-trade crackdown that Secretary of State Colin Powell announced in May 2001 May that the U.S. was extending $43 million in humanitarian aid to Kabul, under U.N. auspices, as a reward.

Now that it has the war on terror as a perfect excuse for such wildly risky fantasies as the wholesale remaking of the Middle East at gunpoint, winning the drug war in Afghanistan is no longer even on the White House's radar. Never mind that the drug trade is booming in Afghanistan and those who harbored Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are regrouping.

In the opium haze that threatens to swallow up Afghanistan's vaunted rebirth, it is only the illusion of progress -----not progress itself ---- that is being sold. Because the president has presented all this as a wonderful dream instead of a nightmare that Afghanistan has had before, it raises the question: Just what is he smoking?

What is Bush smoking indeed, and where can I get some? Oh, that's right, Afghanistan.