A ‘wholesale change’ in Afghan strategy?

Imagine a foreign army occupies the state of Indiana. Its commanders are concerned that local Hoosiers don't like the foreigners in their midst, displaying that dislike practically every night by setting off murderous roadside bombs every time a patrol goes by.

And because the local people are at odds with the occupation forces, they offer those troops precious little help or intelligence as they pursue their military mission.

The commander brings in some experts to find out why his troops are so unpopular. They interview the local farmers. And the answer comes back: "It's the corn."

"What? The corn?"

"Yeah, the stuff the Indians called 'maize,' " the experts explain. "It's the major agricultural crop around these parts. It's the way the locals make their living."

"And? So?"

"Your men have been burning it."

"Of course we've been burning it. Importing corn is a crime, back home," the commander says. "It cuts into the profits of the wheat and potato farmers. Besides, people associate it with some very unpopular ethnic minorities."

"Well, that may be," one expert responds. "But it's the way these locals make their living, and if they see you as people who are here to destroy their crops and leave them starving and penniless, your problems aren't going to improve."

"We gave them free seeds. We told them they could grow pansies and zinnias. Pansies are quite lovely."

"Not going to work, sir. These people have been growing corn for generations. It's all they know. There are established markets for their corn. They're corn farmers."

Finally, the military commander relents. He orders his men to stop burning the corn in the fields.

Instead, they wait until the local farmers have gathered their corn into barns and silos ... and then they burn it.

It sounds like a version of Monty Python's old "Doug and Dinsdale Piranha" comedy sketch, but unfortunately it's no joke. The lives lost are real, and they're American.

The occupied state isn't Indiana, it's Afghanistan. And the crop isn't corn, it's the opium poppy, one of the few real money-makers that will grow in that arid, rocky and mountainous land.

Last month, U.S. officials announced our soldiers currently occupying parts of that forbidding land will no longer support the destruction of individual farmers' poppy plants. Instead -- we're serious now -- they will increase attacks on "drug warehouses controlled by powerful drug lords," where the poppy seeds, raw opium and heroin are stored after being moved from the fields.

The Associated Press obligingly reported this as a "wholesale change in strategy."

But it's not. A "wholesale change in strategy" -- and probably the only one that would work, unless we plan to station an infantry squad and a soup kitchen in every Afghan field forever -- would be to find out how much the Afghans get for their crop, offer them 15 percent more, and buy it.

The stuff could then be sold on the world market, where there seems to be plenty of demand, much of which is for legitimate medical uses, even by the standards of those who favor heavy government regulation.

"But that would mean the United States would be profiting from drug dealing!" the country's drug warriors would exclaim.

Oh, please. George Washington put down the Whisky Rebellion because Pennsylvanians were refusing to pay that excise which was the young republic's main source of revenue -- the liquor tax. To this day, Washington benefits from heavy excise taxes every time an American lights a cigarette or pours a glass of booze -- among the least healthy recreational drugs commonly consumed.

And the federal government spends millions of tax dollars on medical research, one of the goals of which is to develop new drugs that produce billions in profits for major drug dealers, though of course we call them "legitimate pharmaceutical manufacturers."

In fact, nowhere in the Constitution can any authority for Washington to regulate the traffic in plant extracts like the Afghan poppy be found -- no one even tried, before 1916 -- though that's neither here nor there for today's discussion.

If supplying the "legitimate medical market" still leaves us with a surplus, stockpile the stuff for the time when America's elderly, having exhausted all our Medicare funds, need some of that "end-of-life counseling" now being proposed by Sen. Edward Kennedy and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Use the proceeds to reimburse Americans for the costs of the Afghan incursion.

Finally, the taxpayers would actually get something back for one of their unwilling "investments."

But that's not all. Once we're the Afghans' friends -- paying them more than they've ever received for their crops -- proceed to make them another offer:

We'll pay them a bonus for each load of opium, if it's delivered with one of Osama bin Laden's men riding on top, all trussed up and ready for questioning.