OBAMA IS SENDING US FORCES TO THEIR DEATHS IN AFGHANISTAN AT THE HANDS OF THE OPIUM TRAFFICKERS HE'S PROTECTING

by Michele Steinberg

April 1 (LPAC)—In a special edition of the LPAC Weekly Report of March 31, Lyndon LaRouche laid out the center of the strategic battle against the British Empire: Afghanistan. LaRouche stated:

"Remember ... there's a war going on in Afghanistan. In this war, the United States, under the present President, is defending the right of the drug-traffickers to continue to operate without interference. We're fighting a war—we're sending troops in, to kill and be killed in Afghanistan, in order to protect the drug-traffickers! These drug-traffickers are also the major source, of support for control of Russia. Because they harm Russia; they harbor circumstances, like the recent things that just happened in Moscow. These are things which were done, and are being done against the United States, by killing our troops, in Afghanistan—with the President's permission, and encouragement!

"At the same time, the same forces, the same group of people, who were behind 9/11, are operating against Russia, too, now. And will operate against other nations.

"And Obama is practically committing an act of treason, by sending U.S. troops into area, to be killed, by the logistical force which Obama is defending. If that isn't tantamount to treason, I don't know what is."

While the U.S. protection of the British-sponsored opium production in Afghanistan—which grew 40-fold after the U.S. and Nato occupation of Afghanistan began in 2001—started under the Bush/Cheney administration, it was Obama who ended all eradication of opium and ended the efforts to eliminate the drug lords and traffickers who fund the Taliban and insurgency operations, just at the point that American patriots in the military mapped out a strategy to eliminate the drug traffickers.

The background to Obama's treason from approximately Spring, 2008, when Lyndon LaRouche put the spotlight on the Afghanistan narco-terrorism as a strategic threat, to his treasonous actions in Afghanistan last week, is summarized here:

Spring, 2008 — EIR researchers begin exposing the opium protection policy in Afghanistan after receiving detailed briefings from several veterans of the Afghan war, who describe that under the NATO agreement for forces in Afghanistan, the military targetting of the "narco-kahns" (drug lords), opium and heroin warehouses, or drug traffickers is absolutely forbidden under NATO rules of engagement. Only "terrorists" and "insurgents" against the Anglo-American-NATO occupation can be militarily targetted. EIR is told that only a decision by the NATO Council could change the rules of engagement, and the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld leadership had absolutely backed up the British occupation policy that protected the opium traffic.

By 2006, Afghanistan had begun producing an unprecedented 8,000 metric tons of opium a year—more than the entire world production of opium at any prior time.

July 27, 2008: Thomas Schweich, a former top level counter-narcotics official in the State Department wrote in a New York Times magazine feature article, "Over the next two years [from July 1, 2006], I would discover how deeply the Afghan government was involved in protecting the opium trade by shielding it from American-designed policies. While it is true that Karzai's Taliban enemies finance themselves from the drug trade, so do many of his supporters. At the same time, some of our NATO allies have resisted the anti-opium offensive, as has our own Defense Department .... The trouble is that the fighting is unlikely to end as long as the Taliban can finance themselves through drugs and as long as the Kabul government is dependent on opium to sustain its own hold on power."

Schweich exposed how the Bush administration backing for Afghan President Karzai's insistence that aerial eradication of opium fields be ended, was fatal to the counter narcotics effort. Schweich showed how the substitution of manual eradication a sure loser that was a disaster waiting to happen. Local Afghanis — farmers and tribal leaders — fought the U.S. forces when they tried to move in to seize opium fields.

July 30, 2008: Gen. Barry McCaffrey (USA, Ret.), the former head of the Office of Drug Abuse Policy under President Bill Clinton, submits his report on Afghanistan to Col. Michael Meese at West Point.

August 7, 2008: EIR endorsed McCaffrey's findings in a press release called "McCaffrey: Afghanistan Disaster, Unless We Send in the Engineers." EIR reported, "McCaffrey writes: 'Afghanistan is in misery.' Sixty-eight percent of the population has never known peace, life expectancy is only 44, and Afghanistan has the highest maternal death rate in the world.... The atmosphere of terror cannot be countered mainly by military means. We cannot win through a war of attrition.... Afghanistan will not be solved by the addition of two or three more US combat brigades from our rapidly unraveling Army.' Instead, McCaffrey argues that, in addition to building up the Afghan security forces, economic measures are also required. He calls for the deployment of a 'five battalion Army engineer brigade... to lead a five year road building effort employing Afghan contractors and training and mentoring Afghan engineers.... The war will be won when we fix the Afghan agricultural system which employs 82% of the population.... The war will be won when the international community demands the eradication of the opium and cannibis crops and robustly supports the development of alternative economic activity.' McCaffrey pointed to the tremendous growth in the poppy crop since the US invasion in 2001 and warned that 'Unless we deal head-on with this enormous cancer, we should have little expectation that our efforts in Afghanistan will not eventually come to ruin.'"

August 2008 - January 2009: EIR publishes major feature articles continuing to detail the Afghanistan opium/heroin traffic connection to terrorism, including the in the November, 2008 attack by Islamic extremist narco-terrorists on Mumbai, India. At the same time, the LaRouche movement organizes among elected officials and military and intelligence professionals to force a change in NATO rules of engagement to eliminate the drug trafficking organizations as the only effective way to stop the continued strengthening of the Taliban/Al Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

January 16, 2009: EIR publishes feature package: Drive the Narcos out of the Americas, which includes the following aspects: Call for U.S.-Mexico Anti-Drug Fight, Excerpting a second report by Gen. McCaffrey; Colombia Nearly Disappeared by Negotiating with Narcoterrorists; How Drugs Can Be Wiped Out, Totally—EIR's 1996 report on the high-technology, nonlethal means of eradicating and seizing drug crops, plus stopping the drug money laundering; LaRouche's 15-Point Plan for a War on Drugs (March, 1985); George Soros, Britain's Drug Kingpin Waging War Against the Americas.

January, 2009: Gen. Bantz John Craddock, Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), the highest military commader in Europe approves NATO military operations against drug traffickers, narco-lords, and drug refineries and warehouses in Afghanistan. But this victory for an effective strategy is short-lived. On January 28, 2009, the German news weekly, Der Spiegel receives a leak of a classified NATO document in which Craddock approves the targetting of narco-traffickers and the bombing of narcotics laboratories in Afghanistan. Shortly thereafter, Craddock's rotation as SACEUR ends, and the anti-opium offensive is effectively ended.

March, 2009: Obama's Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke announces in Brussels that the poppy eradication effort in Afghanistan has been ended because it is "wasteful" and is driving Afghan farmers "into the arms" of the Taliban because it destroys the farmers' livelihood. Holbrooke downplays the significance of narcotics traffic money in financing the insurgency, and lies that the U.S. and NATO will focus efforts on interdicting narcotics shipments, and on stopping money laundering. No such escalation in interdiction or in anti-money laundering operations is carried out against the Afghanistan dope trade.

The George Soros pro-legalization website, www.stopthedrugwar.com, gleefully welcomes Holbrooke's denunciation of opium eradication, and claims the decision as a victory for the march towards drug legalization. Not insignificant is the fact that Holbrooke was a business partner of Soros, the world's leading drug legalizer, in a medical/pharmaceutical enterprise.

May 11, 2009: Obama suddenly fires Afghanistan commander, Gen. David McKiernan, and replaces him with Gen. Stanley McChrystal. McKiernan was reported to EIR to have been favorable to SACEUR Commander Craddock's decision to target narcotics operations and laboratories.

Any U.S./NATO operation against the narcotics trade that is financing the Islamic extremist terrorist operations from Afghanistan to the Northern Caucasas to Moscow and Mumbai, India are ended. On March 28, 2010, Obama mades a surprise visit to Kabul to chastise President Karzai about corruption in his government. Criticizing everything except the opium trade, Obama ensures that the opium traffic will not be touched.