This is not open mike night. TOTV is a privately run website with rules which include no political posts. But there are those that just can't help themselves and insert political posts into almost every thread, resulting in many of them getting closed by the moderators who are just doing their job.

Anyone who wants "free speech", are free to start their own web forum

2 trillion dollars could have built so many hospitals and drug treatment centers…..what a shame

You're confused. That only applies to what our government can do to its citizens, NOT to how a private entity (such as this site) or a company - can do to its members/employees.

You mean like what Latin America has been doing for 30 years?? Americans stop being drug addicts and the problem goes away!

More like 20 years of hospice than remission. Hardly worth it.

I tot

I totally agree.

Let us thank God our troops are coming home.

The following paragraph is from the Wikipedia article “Opium Production in Afghanistan”:

“Afghanistan has been the world's leading illicit drug producer since 2001.[1] Afghanistan's opium poppy harvest produces more than 90% of illicit heroin globally, and more than 95% of the European supply.[2][3] More land is used for opium in Afghanistan than is used for coca cultivation in Latin America. In 2007, 93% of the non-pharmaceutical-grade opiates on the world market originated in Afghanistan.[4] By 2019 Afghanistan still produced about 84% of the world market.[5] This amounts to an export value of about US$4 billion, with a quarter being earned by opium farmers and the rest going to district officials, insurgents, warlords, and drug traffickers.[6] In the seven years (1994–2000) prior to a Taliban opium ban, the Afghan farmers' share of gross income from opium was divided among 200,000 families.[7] As of 2017, opium production provides about 400,000 jobs in Afghanistan, more than the Afghan National Security Forces.[8] The opium trade spiked in 2006 after the Taliban lost control of local warlords. In addition to opium, Afghanistan is also the world's leading producer of hashish.”

Production in 2020 was up 37% over 2019, but the biggest year was 2017. https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop...2020_SMALL.pdf

If people aren’t living in war zones, then we can expect opium production to increase, but we can also expect the price the farmers receive per kilo to decrease. According to the web site OECworld (observatory of Economic Complexity), “ The top exports of Afghanistan are Gold ($968M), Grapes ($214M), Insect Resins ($129M), Other Nuts ($113M), and Tropical Fruits ($97.4M), exporting mostly to United Arab Emirates ($1B), Pakistan ($544M), India ($485M), United States ($35.6M), and China ($29.1M).” Opium brings in far more money every year than all of their other exports combined, so of course they will grow as much as possible because they will have a desperate need for money. Bear in mind that a huge percentage of that opium is used to make Morphine, Codeine, and other non-synthetic opioids for medical purposes.

Afghan
 

Was a huge waste of money! When will the world learn. Gone are the days of Alexander.

Stop trying to interject our western values onto another country's social structure. How would you like if they did the same to us? You wouldn't! We went there to get Osama bin Laden. Job complete - even though he wasn't there. We were in Afghanistan too long. British and Soviets learned that lesson long ago.

When we entered, we should not have expanded the mission and stayed.

Most people agree we needed to leave -- frankly, a long time ago.

How this exit just happened is surprising.

There are still some 10,000 Americans there.

If you find out you have to have surgery, and other doctors agree in the diagnosis, then the surgery should proceed. If of all the facilities and surgeons to select, you pick a free clinic with a drunken doctor to perform the procedure with unsterile instruments, one can question your decision making. This is my issue with what just happened.

It's time to get some drones filled with Agent Orange or some other defoliant and hit the poppy fields.

The poppy fields should have been destroyed before we left. Didn't do it then, do it now!

They've been doing it for years already since we are a major buyer. The Soviets killed their other industries like shoe making.
Don't expect any change unless the Afghanis figure out a way to significantly increase production.

That's odd last time they were in power they destroyed most poppy production. New times I guess.