AFGHANS BRING 'DEATH TO AMERICA' IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE

The Afghanistan drug story was certainly confusing to us here in the
small pond in Alamance County -- the story that the Afghanistan
government (such as it is) wants to encourage drug lords to invest in
the country's economy.

If we understand it correctly, the Taliban, a hated and despised gang
of thugs that fly airplanes into buildings and kill people in the
name of their religion, suppressed the poppy business in Afghanistan
before the U.S. military arrived. Once the Taliban was out of there,
poppy production rose markedly.

Now poppies are simple flowers. In fact, a basic paper version is
given away by veterans in front of department stores in America to
commemorate soldiers who have served the country. The poppy is also
the source of a mighty powerful narcotic -- heroin.

Small-fry Afghan farmers crop poppies, drug lords process and sell it
as heroin, primarily to the west. That's America. Planetary addicts
use about 90 percent of Afghanistan's heroin. Since addicts find it
tough to keep a job, they usually resort to stealing to get money to
pay drug dealers who purchased from the source. That drug money --
estimated at $2.8 billion a year -- is deposited by these drug lords
into banks primarily in the United Arab Emirates, a land where the
United States is not on much of anyone's party list, a land where we
can hear the echoes of "Death to America" float across invisible
borders. We don't know how the drug lords are spending their wealth,
but you have to figure some of it goes to arms and ammo to protect
their investments. In other words, more thugs to protect a very
lucrative business. So, it's no secret to anyone that the country is
making a good living from dealing death, either by needle or firearm.
And we really weren't even surprised that the Afghan government wants
that money to stay at home. What does surprise us is that anyone in
America, from the lowest addict to the highest leader, would think
anyone in Afghanistan gives a flip about American well-being.

Drugs will not be stopped. The allure of massive profits and the
addiction to money and the drug itself that is nearly impossible to
break can only fuel the moral bankruptcy of a government that is
either too greedy or too afraid of challenging these drug lords for supremacy.