This dramatic increase in opium production occurred in spite of the Bush Administration squandering $45 million dollars a year on an eradication program. Now, "U.S. authorities say they are all but abandoning the Bush-era policy of destroying drug crops." (AP, 7/11/09)
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Did you know--not everyone thinks continuing the war in Afghanistan is a good idea?
"Our actions in Afghanistan have caused a perfect storm of untold numbers of civilian deaths, fundamentalist resurgence, and women's oppression. We're protecting a corrupt government with a puppet president and criminal warlords, and our deadly bombing raids have led to a devastated and rightly bitter population and a stronger Taliban. There's no promising indication that our military operations can improve the situation, no matter how many troops are added. If ever the Afghanistan war ever had any legitimacy, it's irreversibly gone."--Sonali Kolhatkar, Foreign Policy In Focus, 11/2/09
"Our troops are fighting people who are fighting us because we're occupying them. ... What we are doing there doesn't attain any strategic value or any goals for the United States."-- Matthew Hoh, U.S. diplomat to Afghanistan, who resigned on Sept. 10, 2009
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Did you know that the American tax payer is not only funding the American forces in Afghanistan, but are also funding the Taliban fighters?
- Virtually every
major project [in Afghanistan]
includes a healthy cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the
Taliban themselves prefer to term it, "spoils of war," the fact remains
that international donors, primarily the United
States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy."--Reuters, 8/27/09
We've been training young men to fight in Afghanistan for decades, "and look where it's gotten us. An overwhelming number of men trained by the U.S. go on to fight for the Taliban instead, which was itself originally trained by the U.S."--former Marine Devon Read, quoted by Ryan Grim at Huffington Post, 11/2/09
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Did you know that US and NATO forces in Afghanistan already outnumber Taliban fighters by a margin of four to one? If you count the Afghan security forces and police, the ratio is more like twelve to one.
Did you know the US Commander in Afghanistan has requested up to 80,000 additional troops (AP, 10/14/09).
"It's impossible to regain the initiative by introducing more foreign forces, which will only breed more resentment and more recruits for the enemy. The Soviets tried the exact same thing in Afghanistan in the 1980s with disastrous results."-- Ljubomir Stojadinovic, a military analyst and guerrilla warfare expert from Serbia, AP, 10/28/09
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Did you know:
It costs $1,300,000 to keep one American soldier in Afghanistan for a year? (U.S. Congressional Research service).
