**Inherency**
And, the US war on drugs currently consists of random assassinations without justice
Hornberger 9 (Jacob, Pres of Future of Freedom Foundation, Oct 28-9, Future Freedom Foundation, http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-10-28.asp ) ET
The U.S. government has now extended its assassination program to the drug war. According to the New York Times, the Pentagon now has an assassination list for suspected drug dealers in Afghanistan. No arrests. No hearings. No attorneys. No judges. No trials. Just kill them. Great! So now the occupation of Afghanistan has expanded not only to CIA drone assassinations but also now to Pentagon’s drug-war assassinations. U.S. officials are justifying the drug-war assassinations as part of their counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan. They say that they’re only going to be assassinating those drug dealers whose drug trafficking is benefiting the terrorists.
I wonder how they make that determination, especially without judicial hearings and trials.Keep in mind that U.S. officials justify their occupation of Afghanistan as part of their overall “war on terrorism.” Keep in mind also that according to them, in the war on terrorism the entire world is a battlefield, including the United States.
And, the US officials use the war on drugs to openly assassinate people
Hornberger 9 (Jacob, Pres of Future of Freedom Foundation, Oct 28-9, Future Freedom Foundation, http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-10-28.asp ) ET
As part of their war on terrorism, U.S. officials claim the power to treat Americans as “enemy combatants,” which entails the power to ignore the rights and guarantees in the Bill of Rights for people suspected of committing the federal criminal offense of terrorism. That includes the power to arrest suspected terrorists, incarcerate them for life, torture them, and deny them due process of law. It also includes the power to assassinate suspected terrorists, a power that U.S. officials have exercised on “the battlefield” in such places as Yemen, where they assassinated an American citizen who happened to be traveling with a suspected terrorist, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. So far, they have not exercised the assassination power on that part of the battlefield that encompasses the United States, but they certainly now wield the post-9/11 power to do so.
War on drugs must end or congress will keep getting undermined
Hornberger 9 (Jacob, Pres of Future of Freedom Foundation, Oct 28-9, Future Freedom Foundation, http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-10-28.asp ) ET
And now they have extended their assassination power to the drug war. And without even bothering to ask Congress to enact a law giving them such power. Hey, this is the era of the war on terrorism. They don’t need no stinking assassination law. All they need is a presidential order to the CIA and the military to begin assassinating people. Will they apply their assassination power to suspected drug dealers elsewhere in the world? After all, doesn’t the sale of heroin everywhere likely put money into the pockets of drug producers in Afghanistan, given that that’s where 90 percent of the world’s heroin originates? We know that they are employing the power to assassinate suspected terrorists in different parts of the world. Time will tell whether they do the same with suspected drug dealers, including, of course, that part of the battlefield that encompasses the United States End the assassinations. End the occupations. End the war on terrorism. End the war on drugs. There is no other solution for restoring freedom, morality, peace, prosperity, and security to our nation.
Obama Policy Fails
Obama’s new policy hurts the Taliban – not the farmers.
Felbab-Brown 9 (Vanda, Fellow @ Foreign Policy, 21st Century Defense Initiative, September 2009, “The Obama Administration’s New Counternarcotics Strategy in Afghanistan”, http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/09_afghanistan_felbabbrown.aspx)KFC
In summer 2009, the Obama administration unveiled the outlines of a new counternarcotics policy in Afghanistan. The new policy represents a courageous break with previous misguided efforts there and thirty years of U.S. counternarcotics policies around the world. Instead of emphasizing premature eradication of poppy crops, the new policy centers on increased interdiction and rural development. This approach strongly enhances the new counterinsurgency policy focus on providing security to the rural population, instead of being preoccupied with the numbers of incapacitated Taliban and al Qaeda. In Afghanistan, somewhere between a third and a half of its GDP comes from poppy cultivation and processing and much of the rest from foreign aid, so the illicit poppy economy determines the economic survival of a large segment of the population. This is true not only of the farmers who cultivate opium poppy frequently in the absence of viable legal and illegal economic alternatives. But, as a result of micro- and macro-economic spillovers and the acute paucity of legal economic activity, much of the economic life in large cities is also underpinned by the poppy economy. After a quarter century of intense poppy cultivation, the opium poppy economy is deeply entrenched in the socio-economic fabric of the society. Islamic prohibitions against opiates notwithstanding, the poppy economy inevitably underlies Afghanistan’s political arrangements and power relations. Profits from taxing poppy cultivation and protecting smuggling rings bring substantial income to the Taliban. A recent CRS report (August 2009) estimates the income at $70-$100 million per year, which accounts for perhaps as much as half of Taliban income. But many other actors in Afghanistan profit from the opium poppy economy in a similar way: former warlords cum government officials; members of Afghanistan’s police; tribal chiefs; and independent traffickers. Moreover, the Taliban and many others who protect the opium poppy economy from efforts to suppress it derive much more than financial profits. Crucially, they also obtain political capital from populations dependent on poppy cultivation. Such political capital is a critical determinant of the success and sustainability of the insurgency since public support or at least acceptance are crucial enablers of an insurgency. Indeed, as I detail in my forthcoming book, Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs, along with providing order that the Afghan government is systematically unable to provide and capitalizing on Ghilzai Pashtun sentiments of being marginalized, protection of the poppy fields is at the core of the Taliban support. By not targeting the farmers, the new counternarcotics strategy is thus synchronized with the counterinsurgency efforts because it can deprive the Taliban of a key source of support. Its overall design also promises to lay the necessary groundwork for substantial reductions in the size and impacts of the illicit economy in Afghanistan.
Troops in Afgan can’t stop the opium cultivation.
Morgan 9 (Scott , Chronicle Blog, 04/30/2009, http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blog/2009/apr/30/obama_goes_to_war_against_afghan)
In a renewed effort to stamp out the Taliban by cutting off their cash flow, Obama is sending 20,000 troops into opium producing regions of Afghanistan. It's going to be a disaster. Jacob Sullum dug through this New York Times story and found several reasons why this plan will fail spectacularly: 1. Although the Taliban "often fade away when confronted by a conventional army," they "will probably stand and fight" to protect their revenue stream. 2. "The terrain is a guerrilla's dream. In addition to acres of shoulder-high poppy plants, rows and rows of hard-packed mud walls, used to stand up grape vines, offer ideal places for ambushes and defense." 3. "The opium is tilled in heavily populated areas...The prospect of heavy fighting in populated areas could further alienate the Afghan population." 4. "Among the ways the Taliban are believed to make money from the opium trade is by charging farmers for protection; if the Americans and British attack, the Taliban will be expected to make good on their side of that bargain." 5. Opium poppies are "by far the most lucrative crop an Afghan can farm." 6. "The opium trade now makes up nearly 60 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product, American officials say." 7. "The country's opium traffickers typically offer incentives that no Afghan government official can: they can guarantee a farmer a minimum price for the crop as well as taking it to market, despite the horrendous condition of most of Afghanistan's roads." 8. "Even if the Americans are able to cut production, shortages could drive up prices and not make a significant dent in the Taliban's profits." There's also the fact that there's enough opium buried somewhere in Afghanistan to supply the entire world for years. Sorry guys, eradication won't work. Stop trying it.
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