Dear Mr. President...
Monday, November 30, 2009 Dear Mr. President:
Afganistan is a narco-state. The only way to win that war is financially. Instead of spending the 40 billion dollars on coffins for our soldiers, use the money to buy heroin crops directly from Afgan farmers and then centrally destroy the heroin and/or divert into a government-sponsored pharm industry (to compete with overpriced pain relief pharm industry).
Doing so will buy you the country: money still buys good will, but wars never do.
I grew up in the Soviet Union and served in the Soviet military (I didn't serve in Afganistan but idealistically wanted to). The naive idealism of the youth and the agenda-driven militaristic/expansionist patriotism of the right can sure win you some applause as you announce your rationale for continued war effort in Afganistan, but it will be effectively the end of your political legacy.
The war in Afganistan cannot be won militarily. There was a quote earlier this year: it went something like that: "You have watches, we have time." It was, I think, said by an Afgan commander. This is exactly the issue. There is no amount of money or no amount of military assets that one can amass to win the battle of time. Afganis, just like Russians (if they had lost WW2) are not going to surrender. There is a reason why the word "partisan" (in its subversive military sense) came to be used in politics. Partisanship - be of political nature or of national self-defense nature - is a timeless force to reckon with.
WW2 was called by the Soviets "the Great Patriotic War." The name summons age-old, inextinguishable national ambition for sovereignty. I am sure the same is happening in Afgan minds. You see it as a war you can win. They see it as a "great patriotic war" that will go on as long as the world is round.
Please, stop. Refocus on financial warfare (see my point about heroin trade above). Refocus on Pakistan (at least there is a nation for nation-building there). And refocus on America.
Please.
Sincerely,
Pavel Somov, Ph.D.
Naturalized US Citizen
Psychologist