Step one in getting out of Afghanistan

Thankfully good ideas never die. To summarize (although I highly recommend reading the article), instead of trying to stop farmers in Afghanistan from growing poppies for the illegal opium trade, we should licence the poppy growers as suppliers to make medical grade morphine. This would turn the Afghan farmers into our partners, deny the Taliban a big source of their funds and popular support (they provide security for the poppy fields), establish a legal, lucrative industry for the Afghan economy, and it's estimated to only cost approximately $4 billion a year which is a bargain compared to the costs of the allied military action there.

Or we can continue the war on drugs in concert with the war on terror. They've both been such smashing successes to date.