Ah, Afghanistan. The good war. The poster child for regime change.
Well, looks like the poster child is a bad seed. From the NYT:
- Since beginning work last month, the country’s Central Poppy Eradication Force, an American-trained group, has destroyed less than 250 acres, according to the two American officials. Its original goal was to eradicate 37,000 acres, but that target has recently been reduced to 17,000 acres. With the poppy harvest already under way, the actual eradication levels will probably be far lower, the American officials said.
Via Jacob Sullum, who adds,
- A serious attempt to reverse the situation would cause severe economic dislocation, alienate farmers, ignite widespread protests, and compromise the war on terrorism.
Mr. Sullum must be overlooking the brilliant plan put forward by Glenn Reynolds last year:
- While I’m (sort of) on this topic, why doesn’t the United States address the Afghan opium trade by just buying the stuff up? Presumably, farmers would be just as happy to sell their poppies to us, and that would keep them off the market, as well as depriving bad guys of a revenue source. Am I missing something here?
Life is too short to do that question justice, but Reynolds’ ability to cram so much economic ignorance into so few words is truly impressive. Perverse incentives, anyone?
Sullum wants to end the War on Drugs, as do I. But given the Mom-baseball-apple-pie value of the drug war to American politicians – not to mention the bling-bling it provides to defense contractors, the pharmaceutical industry, and others at the public trough – I don’t see prohibition ending any time soon. Any hope that the poppy explosion in Afghanistan will “heighten the contradictions” of the drug war to a breaking point is naïve. Regime change in Kabul has – like most government interventions – only accelerated the dialectic of bad policy, with no end in sight: more of the alleged problem, more of the so-called solutions. More heroin on your street, more of your money for interdiction efforts and incarceration, more of your freedoms abridged, more profits for the most ruthless black marketeers, more wars for the world’s policeman, and the wheel goes ’round and ’round. But at least you’ll have something to take the edge off.