Heroin BAD. Capice?

So anytime our troops see a “suspicious-looking” Afghan, they shoot at them (but usually miss intentionally; as a warning.) At the same time, they’re trying to win the “hearts and minds” of these people they’re shooting at, so if it turns out their target isn’t a terorist, they let them go about their business.

Unfortunately more often than not, their “business” is poppy crops and heroin. So if troops find a pound of heroin, they just let it go…apparently it’s the Afghan government’s job to enforce drug laws. What a joke. Not only is there hardly any government to speak of, but the government that is there has no intention of stopping the flow of opium out of its borders.

Having grown up in Baltimore, the heroin capital of the nation, and where the vast majority of homicides are linked to the drug trade, I feel as though our government is letting us down for not having a stronger mandate against illegal drugs in Afghanistan. I mean, we’re there. In the opium choke point.

Burn the crops! What’s that? Poppies are their livelihood? Well, that’s a terrible livelihood! What the hell’s wrong with these people? Who told them to take up poppies? Wait, forget it, I don’t care who. There’s no reason why the people who force the farmers to grow poppies can’t be dealt with.

Growing poppies is an amoral way to get by. There are other ways of making money in this world than barely profiting off of the death and destruction that poppy-based drugs cause. If farmers can’t find those other ways, then, well…they’re out of luck, I guess. Join the Afghan army or something. I want our troops burning those poppy crops wherever they find them…and if they’re regrown, burn ‘em again, and salt the earth for good measure. This is frikkin’ ridiculous.