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There may be an immediate positive outcome -- which would suit Trump's attention span -- but like the efforts under Obama -- it will be the lasting effect which we won't know for some time that will count.
You could as easily bomb the fields. That we are not going after the fields leads me to believe this is not a true effort.
The fields have workers, civilians in them. They also often have market produce growing with the opium -- not good for PR. The liberal MSM would clobber Trump and military with bombing fields, especially if "innocent Muslim farmers" were hurt.
I thought the Taliban had suppressed the opium trade when they were in power, and it came back when the Taliban were driven out.
According to this the Taliban has adopted the opium trade as well. I don't necessarily doubt that but if anything the non Taliban areas would be just as prolific in producing the stuff.
The problem is the farmers need a substitute cash crop that will genuinely help them survive. Absent that burning their fields will just enrage them and they will plant again.
It's not that simple regarding the Taliban suppressing the opium trade. They did it to get UN funds because a drought had taken out their crop. In other words, they needed money to sustain themselves, and they needed it for somewhere since the crops were destroyed. So they used a phony ban and appealed to the UN for money.
After seizing Kabul in 1996 and taking control of much of the country, the Taliban regime encouraged local opium cultivation, offering government protection to the export trade and collecting much needed taxes on both the opium produced and the heroin manufactured from it. U.N. opium surveys showed that, during their first three years in power, the Taliban raised the country’s opium crop to 4,600 tons, or 75% percent of world production at that moment.
In July 2000, however, as a devastating drought entered its second year and mass starvation spread across Afghanistan, the Taliban government suddenly ordered a ban on all opium cultivation in an apparent appeal for international recognition and aid. A subsequent U.N. crop survey of 10,030 villages found that this prohibition had reduced the harvest by 94% to a mere 185 tons.
It's all about money... whether it's from the crop, or the U.N.
There may be an immediate positive outcome -- which would suit Trump's attention span -- but like the efforts under Obama -- it will be the lasting effect which we won't know for some time that will count.
Obama had eight years... the lasting effect would have shown by now... but there isn't any, because he authorized very little military activity in regards to opium. Read post 27, and 28 with the general's updated comments.
They have done more in three weeks than Obama did in eight years.
The fields have workers, civilians in them. They also often have market produce growing with the opium -- not good for PR. The liberal MSM would clobber Trump and military with bombing fields, especially if "innocent Muslim farmers" were hurt.
So Trump is concerned more about his PR than in eradicating the fields?
I have no problem with us defending our borders to keep it from coming in.
With regards to casualties and collateral damage from the general's comments that I posted on post 27,
And so you asked why did we use the F-22.
We used the F-22 because we were going to strike targets that required very low collateral damage. And we needed the most precise weapon that we had at our disposal. And so, that was the Small-Diameter Bomb carried by the F-22, which again, allowed us to be extremely precise, minimize collateral damage, yet still target the Taliban narcotics labs and not cause any undue collateral damage.
With regards to casualties and collateral damage from the general's comments that I posted on post 27,
And so you asked why did we use the F-22.
We used the F-22 because we were going to strike targets that required very low collateral damage. And we needed the most precise weapon that we had at our disposal. And so, that was the Small-Diameter Bomb carried by the F-22, which again, allowed us to be extremely precise, minimize collateral damage, yet still target the Taliban narcotics labs and not cause any undue collateral damage.
Generals like to excuse their butchery in this way. I do not deny that. You can not drop bombs and believe you are not causing collateral damage. We do it this way because if we were really concerned we would send in troops, but then our kids would get killed and people would get antsy and demand we get out.
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