Dear Mr. Obama: Paying Afghani farmers not to plant poppy is an insane policy. The United States' desire to prevent an expansion of poppy cultivation and profit-taking by the Taliban is a deep intrusion into the affairs of a sovereign nation. Our soldiers there "fighting the Taliban" is an even worse intrusion. Besides, the farmers would play a double game, taking our hard-earned money and continuing to plant. Then we're put in the position of having our troops become officers of Drug Enforcement, giving us more occasion to kill "innocent" civilians. I'm happy to read that your administration is abandoning the Bush administration practice of destroying poppy crops in the field, but the whole effort should cease. We are not in a position to play drug enforcement for the world or to force Afghan authorities to become "moral and ethical" as our definition of the words is disconnected from their reality. Opium cannot be classified as intrinsically evil, nor can its consequent corruption be logically asserted. You do know that you have embraced Mr. Bush's basic immoral policy of preemptive military action articulated in his West Point commencement address on June 1, 2002. No wonder it devolved into the horrors of torture, phosphorus bombing of Fallujah, use of napalm during our initial attack on Baghdad as well as many other occasions of our use of Mark 77 firebombs. I exhort you to be a Commander in Chief cut from the cloth of President Eisenhower. Stop the drone-bombing. Stop the war in Afghanistan. Stop the war on drugs. War has never been a solution to problems. Your war in Afghanistan is folly.