President Bush…he’s a straight shooter right? One might say he’s a simple guy who does what he says he’s going to do. I mean, when the leader of the free world says he’s going to do something, he doesn’t mean he’s going to do the opposite, right? At the beginning of his first term as president, President Bush pledged himself to a “War on Drugs.” In December of 2001, he declared that, “if you quit drugs, you join the fight against terrorism,” thus wedding his two favorite wars: the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terrorism.” One might think, in this effort to rid evil from the world, President Bush might try to kill two birds with one stone. I mean, after all, everybody knows that drug money often ends up in terrorist hands. Just a few months before this, in October of 2001, President Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom…in other words the invasion of Afghanistan. The proud men and women of the armed services of the United States of America marched over Afghanistan’s not-so-fertile soil in order to cleanse Afghanistan of the evils that had plagued it. What is of concern to us, however, is not the evils we never found (i.e. Bin Laden), but the evils which we chose to ignore. Ironically, we were marching on them. Today, roughly 50 percent of all the heroin in the world is produced in Afghanistan. Not North Korea, Communist China, or Iran, but American-controlled Afghanistan. And the best part? We’ve always known it! According to the C.I.A.’s online publication, The World Factbook, the primary export of Afghanistan at present is opium (used to make heroin). However, we haven’t just allowed it to happen: we’ve supported it. Remember all that money Bush wanted to help rebuild Afghanistan? Who do you think is getting those tax dollars? After all, they’ve got to go somewhere, and they certainly can’t stay at home. Instead, they’ve gone to the war lords that helped us invade in the first place: the mighty Northern Alliance. In other words, the leaders of Afghanistan, the ones with power and money, are nothing more than drug lords. It’s no wonder then that since we arrived in 2001, “expanding poppy cultivation and a growing opium trade [accounted] for one-third of GDP” (C.I.A.). Of course, in spending millions to rebuild the Afghani economy, a good deal of that fat cash is going to go to producing their chief export, heroin. But there is a silver lining in this rain cloud of hypocrisy. At least the next time you’re purchasing heroin, you’ll know that you are supporting American interests. So be a patriot, and go get yourself a delicious kilo of Uncle Sam’s best.
