It has been three weeks since we began our bombing campaign in Afghanistan – so what have we accomplished?

If our stated policy is to either “bomb `em until they give up bin Laden” or “topple the Taliban,” it has been a disastrous failure. Namely, the Taliban hasn’t warmed up to the idea of giving up bin Laden after airstrikes pummel what little is left of Afghanistan’s infrastructure while our airstrikes have carefully avoided inflicting significant damage on Taliban deployments near Kabul, where the United Front (Northern Alliance) has been literally begging us to open up a hole in the Taliban defenses.

In fact, such deliberate avoidance of a strategic Taliban deployment betrays what’s going on in our policy – we really don’t know what we’re doing.

In recent days it has become increasingly clear that a Northern Alliance-controlled Afghanistan may not be much more palatable than a Taliban-controlled one, in addition to the fact that some of our key allies in this operation vehemently oppose the Northern Alliance seizing Kabul, namely Pakistan.

Thus our stated goal to overthrow the Taliban puts us in no better position than we began in – at least in light of the available options.

The only apparent thing that we are attempting to do right now is use the United Front as a puppet player in destroying al- Qaida and capturing bin Laden. This despite their horrible human rights track record – a disturbing throwback to the days of the CIA’s “School of the Americas” training our own brand of “state-sponsored terrorists” as well as official U.S. support of puppet regimes such as Pol Pot, Manuel Noriega and of course, don’t forget the Mujahideen (the Taliban).

Need anyone be reminded that using puppet players to achieve our foreign policy ends is the main reason we’re in this mess in the first place?

Our past policies of nation-building outside of World War II have been a monumental flop, with most of such leading to tyrannical regimes that oppress their people and engender hatred toward the United States, all with official taxpayer support, and yet we once again threaten to make that very same mistake.

A better option which has been explored by the Bush administration has been to cut off funding to sources of terror. Yet, many who have supported this idea have failed to realize this comes with an unpalatable reality check.

For instance, if we want to cut off bin Laden’s funding, the first place we should look is to stop supporting corrupt regimes that are our supposed allies, like Saudi Arabia. Millions of dollars have been funneled through official and unofficial channels in Saudi Arabia by a government who claims to be our ally, yet whose state-controlled media regularly decries the United States in terms almost fitting of bin Laden himself.

Saudi Arabia isn’t the only culprit either – many of our supposed “friends” in the region use the shadow of U.S. support to inflict oppression upon their people and then turn around in their state-run media and blame the U.S. for their ills. Given that there exists no free press to combat these lies, our support of these regimes only serves to undermine our security abroad rather than enhance it.

Then there’s the drug trade – namely, the fact that 75 percent of the world’s heroin is produced in Afghanistan. Compounding this is the fact that most terrorist factions are significant players in the drug market – both in production and distribution.

Like it or not, the only solution here is to make drugs unprofitable – and our current means of doing so (such as direct military aid in Columbia) have been a disappointing at best and horrifying at worst with the human rights abuses such a policy invited. The only real solution on the table right now is legalization – an option that few members of either party in Congress are willing to touch (and probably won’t for years).

Finally, it’s time to reconsider the policies which provoke enraged people to support terror directly or indirectly. It’s time to end our quixotic sanctions on Iraq which have failed to remove Saddam from power or prevent him from developing weapons of terror – sanctions which have only managed to starve over a million Iraqis.

It’s time to stop using our military presence abroad to “protect” regimes such as Saudi Arabia who have no interest in securing freedom for their people.

Such actions only serve to provoke deep hatred of the United States by the people of the Middle East and motivate them to contribute to anyone that promises to oppose us, creating what amounts to a “terrorist telethon.”

It’s true that the best way to stop terrorists is to bankrupt them. Doing so won’t be as pretty as some would make it out to be – in fact much of it involves us facing up the ugly truth of the world.

However, continuing to live in a delusion will only needlessly sacrifice more American lives.

Steve Skutnik is a senior in physics from Palm Harbor, Fla.