Barack Obama has been having some foreign policy trouble lately. The term "lately," of course, only applies because Mr. Obama himself has only lately decided to start wading into the arena of foreign affairs with suggestions and actual policy proposals -- and, unfortunately him, the vast majority of those suggestions and proposals have served to demonstrate his inexperience, naivete, and ignorance with regard to the world around him and the people and cultures living in it.

On May 13, Obama juxtaposed Iraq and Afghanistan -- two entirely separate cultures, with languages and races that come from entirely different stocks and families -- in an attempt to claim that Iraq was distracting from success in Afghanistan due to its requirement for Arabic translators that would, for some reason known only to the erstwhile wannabe-President, be put to better use in Pashtun, Farsi, etc.-speaking Afghanistan.

In that same speech, Obama added that "we need agricultural specialists in Afghanistan," as well -- "people who can help them develop other crops than heroin poppies, because the drug trade in Afghanistan is what is driving and financing these terrorist networks. So we need agricultural specialists.

"But if we are sending them to Baghdad, they're not in Afghanistan."

The Afghan farm piece of Obama's War on Terror stump speech is back, as can be seen in the video below from the same Las Cruces, New Mexico speech that featured the Democrat's attempt to place his Uncle at the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp (which, likely unbeknownst to Obama, put his relative in Stalin's Red Army for WWII).

So, according to Obama, "if you talk to commanders on the ground there [Auth. note: "There" being "Afghanistan"], they'll tell you, "I'd rather-- Instead of having another platoon, I'd rather have an, uh, couple of agricultural specialists."

Really? Really?

"We need more troops on the ground in Afghanistan," he continued, "but what we also need is to teach them to grow things other than Poppy."

"It's going to be one of the central challenges of my administration."

Unfortunately, Obama didn't include in his statement whether these would need to be Arabic-speaking agricultural specialists, or if those who spoke languages that Afghanis actually speak and understand would suffice.

Obama, whom I don't believe has ever been to Afghanistan, who has missed two of the three Afghanistan-related meetings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since joining that panel, who previously called for more troops to be sent to the region "so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there," and who has yet to call a single meeting of his own NATO-overseeing Senate Subcommittee on Europe, expects us to believe (a) that he has discussed with "commanders on the ground there" what their needs are, and their preferences to increased troop levels, and then, after we have suspended disbelief long enough to accept (a), (b) that those "commanders on the ground there" actually told Obama -- not their chains of command, but Obama -- that, "instead of having another platoon," they would "rather have...[a] couple of agricultural specialists."

Afghanistan is a sticky issue, given its prominent place in the War on Terror and in a very sensitive region -- and the magnitude of opium poppy cultivation does not help those matters. According to the UN, in 2007 Afghanistan produced 93% of the world’s opium poppy -- a record high for the second year in a row. Contrary to Obama's apparent assumption, though, such enormous production of the opium and heroin-producing plant does not sound like a problem of ignorance; rather, it sounds like a response to a market demand. In other words, Afghanis do not necessarily cultivate poppies because, as Obama so richly assumes, they are simply too ignorant to know how to grow anything else; rather, the ease of production and gross demand for their product dictates that it is the most lucrative crop for them to grow.

If this is the case, in order to peacefully wean a farmer in Afghanistan off of poppy production, a suitably lucrative replacement must be made available.

Such a strategy has, according to the U.N., been effective in the northern portion of the country. According to David Johnson, an Assistant Secretary with the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs:

UN surveys showed significant poppy reductions in the north of the country, including in the traditional poppy-growing provinces of Balkh and Badakhshan.

During 2007, the number of poppy-free provinces more than doubled from six in 2006 to 13 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces in 2007. These trends demonstrate that counternarcotics success can be achieved where there is security, political will, and the ability to provide alternative development opportunities.

With regard to the U.S.'s specific counternarcotic strategy in Afghanistan, Johnson said:

In particular, we aim to dramatically enhance incentives for participation in licit livelihoods through the provision of additional development assistance, while simultaneously strengthening the disincentives in participating in all facets and levels of the narcotics industry through increased interdiction, eradication, and law enforcement. The complexity of the drug problem in Afghanistan demands a balanced counternarcotics approach that melds deterrence, prevention, and economic development assistance.

That sounds to me a lot more like a strategy to curb poppy production by making other opportunities more lucrative than by condescendingly deigning to teach those ignorant Afghani rubes how to grow something other than opium -- but hey, that could just be me.

Thomas Pickering, State's former Under Secretary for Political Affairs, was more specific about the incentive/disincentive program, saying:

“Drug money” weakens key institutions and fuels and strengthens the Taliban, while at the same time corrupting the country‟s governmental leadership.

There are serious disputes about how best to deal with the drug economy. Some want large-scale aerial eradication with the potential for serious, disruptive impacts on rural Afghans and their livelihood. Others are counseling more gradual but more complete approaches seeking to find crop substitutes and other supports for the 90 percent of Afghans who have said they are willing to abandon poppy cultivation if they can count on earning half as much from legal activities.

The issue does not appear to be ignorance, as Obama is so quick to assume; rather, it appears, as mentioned above, to be the market. In fact, as Johnson points out, the poppy fields in the most problematic areas are not even primarily owned and cultivated by poor subsistence farmers who have limited knowledge and need a simple cash crop to survive; rather, these fields are primarily the property of wealthy drug lords and corrupt public officials. Said Johnson:

Some have suggested that increased eradication would have the effect of pushing “farmers with no other source of livelihood into the arms of the Taliban without reducing the total amount of opium being produced.”

The facts do notsupport this view. The poppy fields in the south – where poppy cultivation and the insurgency are most acute – are largely owned by wealthy drug lords and, in some instances, corrupt officials.

Recent aerial reconnaissance missions have observed organized and industrialized poppy farming in broad, open fields. Helmand Province is also a significant recipient of international assistance. In fact, if Helmand were a separate country, it would be the sixth largest recipient of bilateral USAID assistance in the world. Pursuing non-negotiated, force-protected eradication would primarily impact these well-financed narco-farmers and provide a blow to the insurgents that protect them in the process.

The following, again from Johnson, sounds like more of the same:

During FY 2007, nearly $229 million in funding was allocated for USAID-led alternative development initiatives, which included efforts to implement a rural finance program to provide credit to farmers and small- and medium-sized enterprises, to create overseas markets for Afghan agricultural exports, to provide technical and material assistance to farmers, to establish economically viable infrastructure to produce and move licit goods to market, and to administer cash-for-work programs.

Johnson and Pickering's statements, by the way, were part of their testimonies to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing entitled "Afghanistan: A Plan to Turn the Tide?" Barack Obama was clearly out sick (or campaigning) that day.

Given the testimony above, not once does it sound like the solution to Afghanistan's poppy problem, according to those who actually study the area, visit the country, and show up for meetings, is to send farmers there to "teach [the Afghanis] to grow things other than Poppy."

Of course, Obama would likely claim that to be the exact reason why the U.S. is not succeeding in curbing overall poppy cultivation.

Perhaps he should go visit the country, taking an Arabic translator with him, and ask the farmers himself.

It might be a good chance to actually talk to those commanders on the ground he has been avoiding for so long, as well.