An alternative to the surge in troops to Afghanistan

The following few paragraphs come near the end of a much longer article by Alfred M. McCoy, "The Opium Wars in Afghanistan." You can find the full article at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/31-0

McCoy, a truly outstanding scholar, helps the reader to understand the historical and ongoing role that the US has played in the destruction of Afghanistan's agricultural system, unintentionally perhaps in fostering an economy that revolves largely around the cultivation of poppies, and preserving a system that brings rewards to a few and miserable poverty for the many.

In the paragraphs taken from the article, McCoy offers an "alternative" to the strategy of surging the troops (now in process). McCoy's alternative is succinct, doable, and makes a lot of sense.

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"....Is there any alternative? Even were the cost of rebuilding Afghanistan's rural economy -- with its orchards, flocks, and food crops -- as high as $30 billion or, for that matter, $90 billion dollars, the money is at hand. By conservative estimates, the cost [23] of President Obama's ongoing surge of 30,000 troops alone is $30 billion a year. So just bringing those 30,000 troops home would create ample funds to begin the rebuilding of rural life in Afghanistan, making it possible for young farmers to begin feeding their families without joining the Taliban's army.

"Short of another precipitous withdrawal akin to 1991, Washington has no realistic alternative to the costly, long-term reconstruction of Afghanistan's agriculture. Beneath the gaze of an allied force that now numbers about 120,000 soldiers, opium has fueled the Taliban's growth into an omnipresent shadow government and an effective guerrilla army. The idea that our expanded military presence might soon succeed in driving back that force and handing over pacification to the illiterate [24], drug-addicted Afghan police [25] and army [26] remains, for the time being, a fantasy. Quick fixes like paying poppy farmers not to plant, something British and Americans have both tried, can backfire and end up actually promoting yet more opium cultivation. Rapid drug eradication without alternative employment, something the private contractor DynCorp tried so disastrously [27] under a $150 million contract in 2005, would simply plunge Afghanistan into more misery, stoking mass anger and destabilizing the Kabul government further.

"So the choice is clear enough: we can continue to fertilize this deadly soil with yet more blood in a brutal war with an uncertain outcome -- for both the United States and the people of Afghanistan. Or we can begin to withdraw American forces while helping renew this ancient, arid land by replanting its orchards, replenishing its flocks, and rebuilding the irrigation systems ruined in decades of war...."