http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpafg244273545may24,0,771422.story?coll=ny-editorials-headlines<snip>
The United States is paying the price for its sins of omission in Afghanistan. Freed from the Taliban's religious shackles, the nation was never afforded the attention, aid and expertise to turn it into a well-functioning state as the Bush administration shifted its focus to the Iraq war. Despite billions of dollars in economic aid and military help, Afghanistan teeters on the edge of dysfunction today.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's visit with President George W. Bush last weekend was strained by the dissemination of a State Department memo criticizing Karzai's failure to cut back on his nation's opium and heroin production. The memo, addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said Karzai "has been unwilling to assert strong leadership" in curbing the hugely profitable opium trade. But the United States must share the blame.
During his state visit, Karzai tried to deflect the charge by focusing instead on recent reports of U.S. abuses and deaths of Afghan prisoners in 2002, and making a patently futile demand to be granted command authority over U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The reality is that opium eradication efforts, largely financed by the United States but overseen by British forces - U.S. troops are still busy hunting the Taliban and Osama bin Laden - have been an abysmal failure. Afghanistan is now the source for most of the world's supplies of heroin. Its opium crops are grown in record amounts. And, to be fair to Karzai, his prospects of persuading drug lords and opium farmers to cut back on their lucrative crops are dim at best.
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