Poppies and Pomegranates

There is yet another obscure way our government is trying to fight the so-called “war on terror” (besides actually stopping it).

Pomegranates.

Apparently these delicious (but ridiculously hard-to-peel) fruits are the key to fighting terror in Afghanistan and thwarting the Taliban. Unable to keep local Afghan farmers from growing the lucrative opium poppies, the U.S. government is now trying to convince them to switch to the [slow-growing and less lucrative] pomegranate crop to export to world markets.

Following U.S. Government logic, this would deprive the Taliban of their illicit drug trade – and without funds the insurgency would disappear (because, you know, the only reason they are terrorists is because they have illegal drug money…I mean, it’s not like there is a religiously extreme, petro-dictatorship like Saudi Arabia out there with a history of supporting the Taliban that could step in and keep the money flowing…).

As a matter of agricultural development policy, I fully support Afghans growing pomegranates and making a buck. It is a critical component of an integrated strategy for success and reconstruction.

But it can’t be in isolation. As long as we’re dropping bombs from 30,000 feet and are willing to accept “collateral damage” that Afghan and Pakistani villagers are not, buying every last pomegranate in Kandahar won’t matter.

First we must put aside the obvious economics behind supply and demand, principles of free trade, and international competition that would drive pomegranate prices down should a massive influx on world markets take place. There is also the fact that the trees only produce one crop a year (poppies produce two).


But more importantly, pomegranate trees take 4-5 years to mature before you can harvest anything. That’s a long-term investment in the future. What about America’s half-assed, infrastructure-lacking, non-reconstruction fund-having, short-sighted, ex-pat alcohol-drinking aid worker, undersized military force and their window-dressing, Euro-centrist, photo-op development projects would make Afghans think we have any intention on supporting something long-term?

The only reason we’re still stuck in a war in central Asia 7 years on is because Bush and his neo-con “do it on the cheap” CEOs-turned-War Cabinet ignored the Afghanistan problem, hoping it would just go away.

But what really pisses me off is that NBC News is regurgitating another Pentagon stunt about “how to fight terror” in isolation – a stunt whose sole purpose is to misdirect the American public’s attention from a comprehensive plan that can really win the war.

Let’s review the many ways our government has told us we can fight terrorism:

Go shopping

Surrender privacy rights

Shred the U.S. Constitution

Throw out habeas corpus

Rewrite the Geneva Conventions

Torture

Promote democracy and then actively sabotage it when you don’t like the result (see: Hamas)

Fund military despots around the world (see: Egypt, Pakistan, et. al.)

Veto United Nations Security Council Resolutions calling for Israel to respect human rights and international law

Rendition

Take off our shoes and go thirsty when traveling on a plane

Deploy a mercenary army with no accountability

Invade countries that didn’t attack us

Continue to placate the one that did (see: Saudi Arabia)

Lower the price of oil by “drilling now”

Refer to the enemy as “homicide bombers” but our own bombs as “smart”

Issue travel warnings to reduce cultural interaction

Color-code fear

Entrapment (see: Hamid Hayat, the Lodi “terrorist”)

Blame Al Jazeera and/or free speech for showing photos of people we killed

Build walls (in Israel or on the Mexican border)

Spend a trillion dollars on an unnecessary war instead of domestic development

Send more troops

Blame religion

Drop bombs on villages from remote-controlled airplanes

And now…Buy pomegranates

It seems we have tried just about everything – except the most obvious:

Stop killing non-white, impoverished Muslims.

With President Obama reshaping the US strategy in Afghanistan, I expected new ideas. Instead, he seems to be hoping that doubling-down on Bush’s failed tactics will suddenly and miraculously succeed. In his first three days in office, Obama decided to continue the policy of dropping bombs on Afghan and Pakistani villages from unmanned drones – a policy that has led to hundreds of civilian deaths and recruited thousands more for the Taliban’s cause. Obama has actually increased the frequency and number of drone attacks over the last month.

The media last week reported on Obama’s plan to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan as risky, noting for the historical written record that Obama was now making it “his war.” It’s hard to see how, after only one month, a guy can be responsible for a war after his predecessor fucked it up for 7 years…but I guess that must be the “liberal media” up to their usual tricks.

We’ve seen this tactic used against insurgencies before. Nixon didn’t start the Vietnam War – he just inherited it. But he was the one who decided that expanding the carpet bombing of civilians into Laos and Cambodia would win hearts and minds. Now Nixon is the man remembered for losing a war at the cost of thousands of American and millions of Southeast Asian lives.

The new American president needs more than pomegranates to win hearts and minds, much less a war. If Obama’s answer to the problem in Afghanistan is to drop more bombs and to try to crush an insurgency with military strength, it will be his legacy of failure. Not his war, perhaps, but definitely his shame.

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Peace Y'all