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Monday, Aug 3, 2009
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy blaming the Bush administration as much as the next person. But it sounds like the government in Kabul is able to exercise some degree of influence over how the money is spent, and the longstanding discrimination of Pashtuns against Hazara is well-known and certainly not a historical anomaly limited to the Taliban years. The government in Kabul is overwhelmingly Pashtun, is it not?
I think the biggest helping of blame deserves to be heaped on the US puppet Karzai. His greatest legacy will be the absolutely terrible precedent he has set for Afghan president’s of the future. There is very little substantive progress that he can claim as his own in the 7 years he has occupied the office of the presidency. Sheet, the Taliban got more done than he. That is to say nothing of the fact that his brother is involved in drug smuggling and deserves to be criminally prosecuted.
Meanwhile, American soldiers are struggling to defeat a far inferior foe in the South and killing dozens of innocent civilians every month. The money that is going to Afghanistan, what small part of it actually gets past the US contractors that are greedily gobbling it up, is pocketed by corrupt Afghan officials, sometimes with US help. Have you seen the movie Three Kings? There are situations all over Afghanistan where US military personnel and corrupt Afghan officials are stealing money meant to be spent on Afghan reconstruction. I have no doubt of that. This is why success in Afghanistan will rely on reforming the way business has been conducted over the past 7 years. That is a tall order since half of that reform will have to come from the Afghans themselves, something we have little or no control over.
Most Afghans, especially those living in Kabul, are of mixed ethnicity. It is not until you go into remote areas of Afghanistan that you find ethnically pure people. So, you're contention that it might have something to do with bigotry holds no water. The situation that the people of Bamyan are facing is not different than the one confronting the Pashtun areas East of Kabul. Just because they are Pashtun doesn't mean they are receiving preferential treatment from the government. Moreover, if most of the government is Pashtun it's because Pashtuns are the majority (about 45%) of the populaiton.
When I started writing my first post on this thread this article was among those listed on the frontpage. Fifteen minutes later it was the fourth or fifth story below the Open Salon and Broadsheet ads and Alex Koppelman's tidbits. Given the work that went into this piece, a man traveling through Afghanistan and interviewing people from several different provinces, and the work that goes into say Joe Conason's piece, a man speaking his mind, it is quite stunning how the piece representing far greater actual reporting on a major issue facing the US--namely, war--get's ignored by the public.
Given America's attention span and interest level in Afghanistan, there is no chance in hell we will ever accomplish anything good there. For God's sake, we should get the fu*k out now before we fu*k things up even more and not just for them but for ourselves too.
When Obama 'L'Overture' talks to Iran think Afghanistan and Pakistan
http://gazasolidarity.blogspot.com/2009/03/when-obama-loverture-talks-to-iran.html
Moving the chess pieces for the new primary front in the war on terror. And now they want to sideline Karzai.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/22/us-afghan-plan-to-bypass-karzai
Now that's a man in serious need of an exit strategy or his well-being could be in danger without his US praetorian guard.
Excellent UK Guardian article and good news for Afghanistan. Obama is proving to be smarter, i.e. more realistic, than anyone ever gave him credit for.
Opium.
OPIUM PERIOD.
NO ONE CARES ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE IN AFGHANISTAN.
O
P
I
U
M
That's why we went there in the first place.
Heroin on the street is now cheaper than prescription opiates.
YEAH BUSH and CHENEY!
Government is Organized Crime to the MAX.
Imagine we had cleaned up the Taliban in Afghanistsn, and policed and rebuilt along with our NATO friends, and then never gone into Iraq. We could have done this job very well, at a fraction of our wasted cost in Iraq, and we still could have contained Iraq.
Afghans would be much better off; even Iraqis would be much better off. And, Americans would be much better-liked everywhere.
It was dozens of tribes lead by people even we call 'warlords' before. Afghanistan has never been a country in the traditional sense. And until it steps out of the 11th century it never will be.
According to The Borgen Project:
* 25,000 people (adults and children) die every day from hunger.
* 963 million people are hungry every day (more than the populations of
the USA, Canada and the European Union).
* 60% of 963 million hungry people are women.
* The number of undernourished people rose by 75 million in 2007.
* 10.9 million children under the age of 5 die each year due to malnutrition.
* More than 70% of the 146 underweight children under 5 live in just 10
countries.
* 1 out of 4 children, in developing countries, are underweight.
* 684,000 child deaths world wide could have been prevented by providing
access to Vitamin A and Zinc.
* Malnutrition and hunger related diseases cause 60 % of deaths.
* WFP and UNAIDS estimate that it costs an average of US$0.66 per day
to provide nutritional support to an AIDS patient and his/her family.
* 1 in 7 people do not get enough food to be healthy.
Clearly, Afghanistan needs a great deal of economic development, and this should not come from the US because too much is diverted into the coffers of the contractors. Let Iran, Russia, China, and later on, India, work out how to foster eoncomic development in Afghanistan and dampend down the insurgency. US needs to be thinking of getting out of the country.
falls downhill
Afghanistan and Iraq are nothing but bonanzas for defense contractors and sinkholes for U.S. taxpayers. In the future, we'll drop IPODS instead of bombs and let the spread of information defeat the mindset of people stuck in the Dark Ages.Get out and get home...we have more than enough to do in order to get our own house in order.
Two new major MSNBC scandals reveal much about how corporate journalism functions.
GE no longer bothers to hide its editorial control over its "journalism" divisions.
The case of Otty Sanchez is shocking and gruesome. But it's also a cautionary tale about how we treat new mothers
You two right-wing populists have a surprising amount in common
I have a job offer in the Bible Belt, but my roots are in the Northeast
Salon headlines in your mailbox
