Burn Those Poppy Fields

I can remember the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that hit America. The Twin Towers went down as well as the West wing of the Pentagon was struck. I can remember following the terrorist attacks that then President Bush stated that he wanted to eradicate all sources of funding that helped fund Al-Qaeda, who was responsible for the terrorist attacks. The problem is that all of the funding hasn't been eliminated. In Afghanistan there's an area called Helmand, a front line between militants and foreign forces, is the world's largest opium-producing region. They grow poppy fields. It supplies 92% of the world's opium.

The money that's generated from the poppy fields supplies the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Around $300 million funds these terrorist groups. This whole notion of the "war on terror" is a farce because you can't win a war if you don't cut off the funding or supplies that fuels the enemy you're fighting. President Obama has sent additional troops to Afghanistan this Spring and our troops are there to provide security for Afgfhanistan. They're supposed to win the confidence of the local Afghan population to fight the insurgents. Our troops are just being sent to slaughter due to NATO's ridiculous "rules of engagement."

When America used to be in the business to win wars, we would attack and destroy anything that would be beneficial to the enemy. During World War II, America and its Allies would destroy synthetic oil plants in Germany? Why? To disrupt their mobility. In war, you must devise strategies that would make your enemy vulnerable and defenseless and you must do so by attacking their fuel plants, communication lines, and anything that would help your enemy to win. That's part of the strategy behind winning wars. We weren't in the business to play "nice guy" or try to get the civilians of the country we were fighting in to like us.

I was reading the New York Times archives on the internet and they were mentioning about the poppy fields being part of the front line in Afghanistan. That part of the economy must be scorched if we are going to stop the insurgency in Afghanistan. Anything that fuels Al-Qaeda and the Taliban must be put to an end. That could include a number of things. If we are going to leave the poppy fields intact, we might as well round up our troops and send them back to America because it will be a dying cause. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban won't be irrelevant as long as they receive some kind of funding to keep them in operation.

The poppy fields should've been destroyed during the Bush administration. That shouldn't been done when we first went to war with Afghanistan in 2001. Instead the job is unfinished and we defeated our purpose by not burning those poppy fields. I read the Pentagon was reluctant to do much about it. I was reading where American officials until the last couple of years or so didn't want to be distracted with a "war on drugs". This is not about a "war on drugs", this is about eliminating any type of funding that would benefit terrorists. In this case, it's the poppy fields. The Pentagon and the CIA clashed over this issue and the Pentagon wouldn't do anything about it. They didn't allow our military to destroy the drug laboratories or burn the poppy fields. The Pentagon ignored rumors that some of the warlords that were put into power were involved with drugs.

The Pentagon at once should order that all the poppy fields in Afghanistan by torched. They should be burned to the ground. There's no sense in having our troops in Afghanistan if they aren't going to be allowed to render the Taliban and Al-Qaeda ineffective. This war has taken a toll on our troops and they don't need their hands tied fighting this war. Our troops don't need to be there providing "security." There's too much violence there. We need an all-out war to destroy Al-Qaeda. We should burn the poppy fields to the ground and attack and destroy anything that would aid the enemy to win. We should destroy any of the underground laboratories or anything related to producing drugs. We should cut off any supplies that would benefit these insurgents. It's time the Obama administration means business and that is to totally eliminate anything that benefits Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.