How a Failed Drug War Will Defeat Trump’s Afghan Adventure
After nine months of confusion, chaos, and cascading tweets, Donald Trump’s White House has finally made one thing crystal clear: the U.S. is staying in Afghanistan to fight and -- so they insist -- win. “The killers need to know they have nowhere to hide, that no place is beyond the reach of American might,”...
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It's No Accident
2014 was a banner year for Afghanistan’s booming opium industry. According to a United Nations annual survey released on Wednesday, opium cultivation set a record in 2014, increasing by an impressive 7 percent year-over-year and up nearly 50 percent from 2012. Afghanistan presently produces 80 percent of the world’s heroin which provides billions of dollars...
Read MoreNotes From an Unknown Planet
I read with horror that Hillary Clinton, posing as the Secretary of State, has been in Mexico talking with Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s president, about “the problem of drugs.” Horror is the reasonable response whenever an American official is allowed to pass beyond the beltway. Or stay within it. They never know what they are doing....
Read MoreWar, the CIA and Narco-Trafficking Afghanistan, American Drug Colony
The US doesn't control a scrap of ground in Afghanistan outside the capital. Now, with the up tick in violence and bombings in Kabul, even that is in doubt. Despite President Bush's delusional palavering at the Republican Convention, the US has no reasonable expectation of succeeding in Afghanistan. The countryside is dominated by warlords, the...
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