Moral authority, Allah's approval, and 72 virgins in the afterlife.

And should those fail, bullets.

Is was a simple question: what keeps the Taliban from returning once we leave? I would love to believe lasting pro-American sentiment is as easy to sow in that part of the world as you suggest, but I haven't seen much evidence.

I brought an American company together with farmers in a 90% Muslim country for long term business and some community building. None of those 1,000 + farmers would take up arms against America now. America reached out to them, bought them some farm implements, helped with their water well, taught them how to grow a better crop and BOUGHT it. They're grateful. What part of this don't you understand? We're their friends now.

Thanks again,,
Dorian

As for the former brokers, let's say we've squeezed a Taliban opium buyer out of the market. I don't know how long he can make it with no income, but if he continues to be supported by the Taliban, he's now a loss center rather than a profit center. Even if we have to pay above market value for switchgrass, it's “drug interdiction” which we're only too happy to pay for elsewhere. But in all probablility, like most other nations (and nearly all land-locked ones), they need their agricultural output to feed themselves, and they need to pursue a limited amount of cash crops. Considering the growing world population and rising food prices, that's not a huge challenge. In fact, we could even let them grow medical marijuana for California. Whatever the crop, if we pay a NGO to become a nonprofit broker, we've already made for-profit brokering next to impossible. Then we start training up honest brokers to take over. Taliban need not apply.

JD, the reason I mentioned peaches is that the Thai government did exactly what I suggested; replaced opium poppies with peaches. Poppies are not that rugged and durable a crop, and they take some water. We're not talking cactus here. If they can grow poppies, there are LOTS of things that they can grow.

Now step back from your too-big vision of this for a moment. First, forget produce for local consumption. The Taliban and druglords aren't interested in buying and selling okra or tomatoes. Let's consider one opium growing area. Just before harvest season, we send in buyers with military bodyguards. We offer substantially more than the Taliban for the product. If they're scared enough of the drug lord that they refuse to sell to us we have two choices. First, we can let that go. The farmer now feels screwed by the Taliban, because he is essentially being forced at gunpoint to take much less than he could have for his crop (or the Taliban calculates that we are thus winning hearts and minds and ups the payment, reducing their profit). The second choice is that, having now identified someone who is so scared of a Taliban drug lord they'll accept a rotten deal for themselves and their families, we wait. They have to come and get the opium now. It's harvest season. We ambush them.

I'm not talking about radical change of the base of Afghan society. Many of the rural farmers are children of farmers, will farm til they die and their children will farm. It's like that all over the world. What happens in Kabul is largely irrelevant to them, it does not affect their lives. Same with rugmakers. You think that we have to pay $400 for a rug that's currently $40 to make this work? Not at all. We just open up the wallet and learn EVERYTHING about who buys and sells what, map it all out, pick strategic entry points and bingo. We're the new, nonviolent, better-paying buyer in town.

It costs next to nothing. And when we've spent 10 times the GDP of Afghanistan trying to kill our way to victory, you'll be saying “that wouldn't have worked.”

But a word of doubt to GreenDreams…. The climate and soil of Afghanistan is not good for most cash crops, let alone peaches. That's part of the infrastructure argument, I guess.

But on a side-note. We may be able to save a bunch of military lives, if we just shot a tactical nuke into the hindu-kush mountains. Just kiddin (or am I?).

LOL

TIME has an excellent set of articles on the Afghanistan puzzle.

In one article, “What should we do now?” two persons, quite a bit more knowledgeable of the country, the war, the issues than me, give two quite different views on what we should do in/about Afghanistan,,,that's the conundrum we find ourselves in.

However, please keep those e-mails and letters coming

As heavy-handed as it sounds, I look at how far we have to go and don't see any other path to success. The only way to keep the Taliban out of Afghanistan is to turn a bunch of $760/year goat farmers into a cohesive, modern nation able and inclined to repel them. Turning Afghanistan into another Pakistan ($2624/person/year) isn't good enough. Even turning it into another Mexico ($14,534) or Russia ($15,949) may not be enough to get it to value peace over jihad. Think South Korea ($27,692) or Israel ($28,474)–a factor of 40 above where Afghanistan is today. If we could get their GDP to grow 8% a year, they'd get there in 48 years.

The only successful examples of that sort of nation building I'm aware of are the colonial powers of old, who were prepared to take over completely and stay for a century or so. Do we know some shortcut?

If we pull out, I hope we are ok with allowing the Taliban to take control of the country again. The public execution of women, the ban on educating women, the re-institution of sharia law, and the protection of terrorists training grounds.

I don't think we owe them anything…not like we owe the Iraqis, but we need to understand what we are permitting if we leave.

I guess the only aspect we have some differences is perhaps just due to the way we are expressing it or interpreting.

While you say “The original incursion into Afghanistan was a failure, right or wrong.”, I would say that the incursion was a failure because of the way it was executed, not because of the justification for it–and that's probably what you mean. Even in the “execution” our troops did a marvelous job (just read “The Horse Soldiers”), but as you say our troops did not get the support or additional resouces they needed because, you know, that “other war” got in the way, and some incompetents were in charge..

Anyway, let's hope for the best. The people in Afghanistan have suffered enough, especially the elderly, the women and the children, and so are the casulalties among our troops beginning to mount.