The legacy of madmen like former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Vice-President Dick Cheney and others in the George W. Bush administration were part of a neo-con bandwagon to remake the world in the image they desired. They are responsible for starting wars with Afghanistan and Iraq in their dream of a New American Century, where the U.S. Empire would sustain and grow it's geopolitical dominance.
Part of that legacy seems to be increasing the drug production in Afghanistan, while spending billions in tax payer money to act as if they are actually "fighting" it. Rumsfeld even used the "danger" of Afghan's drug trade as a justification for being in Afghanistan:
"The danger a large drug trade poses in Afghanistan is too serious to ignore. The inevitable result is to corrupt the government and way of life, and that would be most unfortunate.... It is increasingly clear to the international community that to address the drug problem here is important for the people of Afghanistan."
Source
Rumsfeld's predictions about corruption were accurate. Little did we know he was foreshadowing what was to come. That was the plan with the U.S. invasion and other "liberating" efforts in Afghanistan that made it into the fourth most dangerous and fourth most corrupt country in the world. It appears the drugs were "liberated" by the war and previous controls of the Taliban, proliferated into aiding the destruction of Afghanistan, rendering it ungovernable.
The only reason Afghans are growing opium is because of the demand in the West that pays for it. Supply is driven by demand in the market. The U.S. apparently only get 4% of the Afghan supply, with most coming from South Africa. But Afghanistan is the largest source of street heroin in Europe and Canada.
In the last quarterly report by the US Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), John Sopko reported that:
"From 2002 through September 2018, the United States has committed an average of more than $1.5 million a day to help the Afghan government combat narcotics. Despite this, 2017 poppy cultivation is more than four times that reported by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime for 2002, the first full year of US intervention in Afghanistan."
Sopko says the "drug war" (or drug fostering it would seem) in Afghanistan that has fueled the drug trade and "cost US taxpayers more than $8 billion since 2002, yet Afghanistan’s opium crisis is worse than ever." That's $8.7 billion from 2002-2017, and if the $1.5 million average per days hold for this year, that will be over $9.3 billion of the past 17 years.
The reason for the proliferation seems to be because there is no plant for counternarcotics, as it's no longer part of the "U.S. agenda". Compared to the U.S., the Taliban kept things more in check. Counternarcotics is no longer a priority for the Integrated Country Strategy of the State Department. It has put counternarcotics into general operations, yet "the US military says it has no counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan."
Fighting narcotics drug production in Afghanistan is dead, despite a campaign in November 2017 to "target Taliban revenue streams" through "a series of attacks on narcotics laboratories in southern Afghanistan." It was a major expensive operation that involved various types of aircraft to bomb, surveil and refuel in air. The first attack took down 10 heroin stockpile and money storage facilities, with at least 400 more to go. US General John Nicholson told the media at the time that "the strikes" were ""going to stay up and we are not going to let up".
But that didn't last. It seems there was a "risk that air strikes could result in civilian deaths, alienate rural populations, and strengthen the insurgency." From January to June 2018 the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan "documented 353 civilian casualties, including 149 deaths, from airstrikes, a 52 percent increase from the same period in 2017." One incident reported in the New York Times was of a fourteen member family with 3 children being killed in an airstrike.
The U.S. has repeatedly denied civilian deaths in airstrikes, but their lies are exposed when shrapnel ridden bodies of children appear in media reports. The war on drugs in Afghanistan is as much of a failure as it is in the U.S. While in Afghanistan the U.S. has stopped the war on drugs, it still goes on in the U.S. Both efforts have wasted billions of the people's confiscated money (taxes). And the drug trade is still booming.
Innocent people get caught up in tyrannical attempts to control every substance that is scheduled as "illegal", no matter how safe it is, especially cannabis compared to alcohol. People are wasting away in prison for simply buying a few grams. Although not a proper solution, they could legalize it all and try to tax it to generate revenue that way, and waste less from working taxpayers. It's still bullshit taxation, but asking for decriminalization of drugs is like asking for something that just won't happen. At least this way their taking money only from the drug industry, and not taking money from everyone else to try to stop it.
Afghanistan would be more peaceful I think, and have less dead civilians, if the U.S. butted out, but that probably won't happen for a long long time. The same is true within the U.S. stopped the insane war on drugs, which is really just a war on people in the end.
References:
- AS THE US SPENT $1.5 MILLION A DAY TO “FIGHT” AFGHAN HEROIN PRODUCTION, HEROIN OUTPUT QUADRUPLED
The Drug Catastrophe in Afghanistan - CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX 2017
- SIGAR QUARTERLY REPORT TO THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS
- The U.S. begins bombing Taliban drug labs as Trump’s Afghanistan strategy takes hold
- A Family of 14 Dies in an Airstrike. U.S. Officials Deny They Were Civilians.
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Thinking what was really meant was instead of combat narcotics it meant controlling narcotics. The CIA has a proven history of drug dealing, as well as using it on their mind control projects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb
Yup, controlling narcotics is the game more than likely. It's a front of a 'fight' while the black ops dealings helps to smuggle shit for their black budget coffers.
There is a drug connection involved with a lot of our over seas activities. They don't do anything about production because they don't want to. We will buy or plunder the heroin and sell it on the black market to fund things that we can't be seen as supporting publicly. It's a lot like that whole Freeway Rick Ross (not to be confused with the rapper) thing back in the 80s where the dude was buying coke from the CIA.
Yup, black budgets love illegal money to siphon it into for their dark deeds.
There are a lot of Turkish, Middle-Eastern, and Muslim gangs dealing heroin in The West now, Europe in particular has been flooded with smack. And, to make things worse, the fent pouring in from China makes OD's a lot more common. Not a good combination.
I would like to see governments making access to heroin something that was legal and controlled. Extreme POV, I know, but there would be far fewer OD's, and the profit-streams would be taken out of the hands of the worst of the worst.
Yes, the only benefit of legalization is making it safer, but moving the profit from one illegal gangster to a legal one called government is marginally better :/
Which EU countries do you talk about? While there is an increase in Germany in the last years to the levels of 10 years ago,
I would say the far worse place is the USA.
(drug deaths through illegal drugs in both cases)
Who are these men?
I have a good guess.
That's odd... GMO opium brought to you by the U.S. black ops scientists :P
LOL, well I meant hand delivered by the troops as the video demonstrates but probably created by people like Monsanto (maybe) because they know how to create terminator seeds? Terminator seeds will keep the farmers under their thumb. That way they'd be reliant upon the seeds every year or so in order to maintain the output and luxurious lifestyle of whatever pittance they're being remunerated with.
Yea man since the invasion the US and uk(Europe too) heroin import has increased massively. It’s so obvious for some of us to see that they went in (one of the many aweful reasons that they blatantly lied to us all about) was to take over he drug trade.... fucking evil people running this world
Cannabis I am all for legalizing and taxing like booze. The taxes don't stop me from drinking, but legalities do stop me from enjoying cannabis. It's not enjoyable enough to be worth the legal costs or hassle if I'm caught with it. You don't tend to go to jail here, but it's an easy $10k in legal expenses and hundreds of hours of time wasted...much like a DUI. So until it's legalized I don't purchase it or have any on me. Now my next trip to Vegas I'm be testing out their edibles as I prefer that over smoking...no idea why anyone smokes when you can have a cookie instead...lol
Yes, so decriminalize it, and no one goes to jail... legalization is just a cash grab for government, while still making it illegal in many ways, just less...
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You made an error in your headline. You wrote "despite" instead of "because".