Don't Let Economy Distract from True Bush Blunders

Cries against the Bush administration have been in abundance over the last few years, and his approval-rating plunge reflects it. The accusations of dishonesty that fuel the emotions behind angry Americans' growls of discontent stem from the War in Iraq. But the resentment is misplaced.

As angst-riddled as we are over the Iraq war, we've seen death tolls and violence in general drop over the past months, and our worries have become more internal – the economy has, for good reason, become our issue of choice - but are we too hasty to remove our worries from abroad?

As we feel more secure about Iraq and less so about our bank accounts, we are ignoring the place that started the conflict that will define Bush's legacy: Afghanistan. They're being treated like an old friend – you check up on them once in a while, know the major events in their lives, but you never get too far into the nitty-gritty issues of their day-to-day.

Well, it turns out our old friend is quite the drug fiend.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's Afghanistan Opium Survey – an absolutely enthralling and insightful paper, and well worth the read – Afghanistan is the world's largest drug producer. Over 193,000 hectares of opium poppies were produced in 2007 – about the area taken up by 475,000 American football fields, or 750 square miles. The number has grown steadily since the War on Terror began in 2001, when only 8,000 hectares were grown, and has doubled in the last two years. The amount of land designated to this purpose is now larger than that used for coca production in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia combined.

In the Middle East, the Taliban are of utmost importance to our anti-terror mission, due to their harboring of al-Qaida agents who sponsored and performed the Sept. 11 attacks. Knowledge of the history of the Taliban's involvement in the poppy trade is imperative in figuring out the next step.

In the late 1990s, the Taliban's only export was opium poppies. The drop to 8,000 hectares in 2001 was due to the ban of production of the plants in accordance with Islamic law (similar to the ban of alcohol and other perception-altering agents). After the American invasion, however, the Taliban did what any regime does in the face of crisis: changes its moral code to benefit themselves economically, effectively lifting the prohibition.

The Taliban now own an abundance of land in southwest Afghanistan, where 70 percent of the crop is grown. The money they are raising is going directly to arm and train militias. Afghani officials are turning a blind eye on this corruption, and – as the UNODC reports – "no country has ever built prosperity on crime."

We all know efficiency is no forte of the federal government, but I don't think our two most costly "wars" – the War on Terror and the War on Drugs – could be more closely related.

And everybody's ignoring it.

Today Afghanistan is responsible for 93 percent of global opium poppy production. Jog your memory; try to come up with a company that has a 93 percent market share of anything. I would be surprised if you could prove that Australia is home to 93 percent of the world's kangaroo population.

This proportion serves as a reminder of what an epic failure both campaigns have been. The War on Drugs has long been considered one of the biggest wastes of government spending, for various reasons. The War on Terror has been criticized for its lack of observable positive results.

Given the data, the United States has no option but to make lemonade out of this bitter situation.

The incredible U.S. military expertise can be used to accomplish a goal that wouldn't be met with complete public dissatisfaction. By wiping out opium production in Afghanistan, we would disempower the Taliban, thus completing a main objective of the original War on Terror. Instead of simply depriving an evil organization of the somewhat superficial post of head-of-government (at least in this case), we could actually disable their ability to fund themselves, therefore disabling their ability to function.

The destruction of the opium poppies could potentially be the biggest eradication of a single drug from eventually making its way to U.S. soil – a huge victory by any standards.

There's no reason to allow this to go unnoticed any longer. It's time to accomplish something concrete in this war. To allow this opportunity to be ignored would among the biggest mistakes of this administration – that says a lot.