Play for Pay

Bribery-I read on the ABC crawl that the US is considering paying Afghan farmers not to grow "heroin". I am not a fan of government subsidies of any kind, whether a car company bailout
(which fails and ultimately results in nationalization anyway), to price support subsidies to American farmers to keep certain commodity prices stable, to paying American farmers for crop substitution or to keep fields fallow (these interventions disrupt the forces that balance the market and subsidies are only necessary when a foreign competitor is subsidizing their industry and/or agriculture, creating an uneven playing field-which certainly happens and must be addressed through domestic subsidy, seeking redress through the World Trade Organization, and/or imposition of tariffs). I certainly have principled objections to buying off foreign criminals in a time where our troops and those of our allies in Afghanistan are sustaining their highest casualties ever due to our aggressive actions particularly in the Helmand province offensive by US marines and British and indigenous forces, combined with the most restrictive rules of engagement these forces have ever faced (they must hold fire if Afghan civilians are downrange including extreme restrictions on fire/air support). Pay Afghans not to produce the opium poppy while they have and are providing material support and rooting for the Taliban? And this at a time when American budgets are stretched thin and US states totter on bankruptcy. Every American is about to face higher taxes, levies, and fees at some or all levels of government including unprecedented rate increases for energy as producers pass their burden on under "cap and trade". I have a better idea in the opium poppy growing, terrorist backing regions. We won't destroy their crops with our sixty thousand US forces actively engaged in combat (unlike Colombia where we only have had the presence of a handful of advisers) if they voluntarily give up growing the poison of Western streets. Otherwise our forces and NATO allies will use chemical defoliant and flamethrowers to destroy the poppies and the farms and houses of those who would attempt to continue to aid terror and international organized crime by continuing to produce them. I don't care if that would make it hard for illiterate Afghan farmers (who love and would gladly lay down their lives for Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden in many instances, who despise foreigners in almost all instances, and who cheered the "achievement" of the September 11, 2001 mass murder when they were told of the "triumph" their crops had paid for and harboring of bin Laden had achieved); it is plenty hard on the ten percent of Americans who are unemployed in the Obama prosperity, none of whom grow opium poppies, none of whom ever would, and most of whom would never resort to selling drugs even to feed their beleaguered US families. Pay me-I promise I won't grow any heroin and kill these insular, terror supporting, misogynist Afghans whose product produces nothing but the misery of addiction and early death on our streets.