“I Beg Your Pardon, Is That a Karzai Crony Poppy Garden?”

Lemme get this straight: Hamid Karzai is the President of Afghanistan, whose country we are propping up in order to hold free and fair elections, allow the Afghans to establish a democratic state where people have the right to govern themselves, while keeping the Taliban at bay. In order to do this, we have spent billions of dollars, and sent thousands of brave men and women to risk life and limb (losing dozens of them per month) fighting a bunch of knuckle dragging religious zealots who believe that women are a lower form of human life, who should be covered with sheets and beaten with pipes.

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I recall that some of the women were publicly executed, stoned, and had their tongues cut out. Yeah, that bunch. We threw them out years ago. Now they are back--threatening our troops, killing dozens of them, and holding their own against the world’s best military, and our generals are not at all sure that we can defeat them without ten times more troops that we already have in place. Back to Hamid. In order to curb drug traffic and expedite prosecution of drug traffickers in the country, the United States has spent tens of millions of dollars and untold time and effort to establish Afghan drug courts. This is because the traditional judicial system in Afghanistan is too cumbersome, inefficient, and corrupt to handle these cases. Why is this important? Well, the bad guys who are shooting at our wonderful young men and women and blowing them up with IEDs are being financed by the opium trade. If we can persuade the farmers not to grow poppies, in favor of some other cash crop, and if we prosecute the big fish who are trafficking in opium and financing the bullets and IEDs that are killing our brave troops, then we might make some headway in our fight to establish a viable, democratic government over there and protect it against the Taliban. However, there seems to be one big hitch in this plan: the Afghan President himself. Yes, it seems that the President of Afghanistan is not even on the same page as the United States, and is in fact working against us. How? Well, those bad guys who are trafficking in dope, financing the war on our brave troops, and helping the bad guys--those whom we spent tens of millions on, to track down, prosecute, and convict in Afghan courts, are being pardoned by the dozen. And by whom? Of course, the President of Afghanistan himself. It seems that his government is so corrupt that the people running Karzai’s campaign have rather seedy relatives who are working against the United States and financing the Taliban through the drug trade. But, since Karzai---above all--wants to be reelected, and since he needs the support of the same well to do supporters whose relatives are working against our wonderful troops, he has decided his main priority is to be reelected. So, in the worst tradition of Chicago politics, Karzai (probably for financial gain or in any event to curry favor with his top supporters) lets the dirtbags go…the ones we just spent millions to convict. This, of course, begs the question: Whose side is Karzai on? With friends like him, who needs enemies? If he is willing to free bad people who are directly financing the war against the United States, all for political gain, then he is no friend of ours and his agenda is not ours. If he gets reelected in part because he curried favor with the relatives of the druggies who are financing the war against us, then how can we ultimately trust him anyway? Put simply--what is the difference between Karzai and the Taliban? Ultimately, he is no less inimical to long term American interests than the Taliban. The only difference is, he is not shooting at us. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime Afghanistan Opium Survey, 2008, revealed that opium production remains strong, though somewhat reduced, and that tens of millions of dollars are being funneled to the Taliban to finance the war against the Afghan government and its allies.