Excellent interview. I continue to believe that the United States makes a big mistake when it thinks only in terms of its military power. Indeed our military power has proven insufficient in Afghanistan, Vietnam and Iraq. Consider the possibilities if we had used our financial might in Iraq. We spent more then the total lifetime income of all but the top 1% of Iraqis. Yet we allowed a situation to deteriorate into 60% unemployment and a devastating loss of essential services such as clean water, working sewers, electricity, roads and schools and effective police security.
My proposal for Afghanistan would be to learn from these errors and focus on the "hearts and minds." For example, first, buy the entire agricultural output of Afghanistan. In this way, we become the source of income and financial security for the Afghan people, displacing warlords and drug lords and depriving them of income. Then forget our notions of hiring American companies like Halliburton and Bechtel, and hire Afghans to rebuild their infrastructure. This improves the lives of the people, while putting them on the time clock and under supervision of their employer, us. I know this sounds like we would be doing things for Afghanistan that we should be doing here at home, but the cost is far less than the military cost as evidenced by our experience in Iraq. Over time, we can contract the Afghan farmers to grow legal crops, food crops, while paying them enough-as much or more than they currently make for growing opium poppies-to have a decent life. This is not a pipe dream (er, no pun intended). On a project I worked with in Thailand, the Royal Agricultural Project found that the fair market price for peaches yielded six times the income per hectare that farmers were being paid for opium poppies. The Project grew the seedlings and distributed them, along with the knowledge of how to grow them, then bought and distributed the peaches. They also had success with strawberries and shrimp farming.
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My proposal for Afghanistan would be to learn from these errors and focus on the "hearts and minds." For example, first, buy the entire agricultural output of Afghanistan. In this way, we become the source of income and financial security for the Afghan people, displacing warlords and drug lords and depriving them of income. Then forget our notions of hiring American companies like Halliburton and Bechtel, and hire Afghans to rebuild their infrastructure. This improves the lives of the people, while putting them on the time clock and under supervision of their employer, us. I know this sounds like we would be doing things for Afghanistan that we should be doing here at home, but the cost is far less than the military cost as evidenced by our experience in Iraq. Over time, we can contract the Afghan farmers to grow legal crops, food crops, while paying them enough-as much or more than they currently make for growing opium poppies-to have a decent life. This is not a pipe dream (er, no pun intended). On a project I worked with in Thailand, the Royal Agricultural Project found that the fair market price for peaches yielded six times the income per hectare that farmers were being paid for opium poppies. The Project grew the seedlings and distributed them, along with the knowledge of how to grow them, then bought and distributed the peaches. They also had success with strawberries and shrimp farming.