We have previously discussed how domestic programs are being cut while the government pours billions into Iraq and Afghanistan. I have previously written about the waste of billions of dollars by the government without any significant discipline for government officials. We have become accustomed to reports of unimaginable corruption and waste in Afghanistan from bags of money delivered to officials to constructing huge buildings to be immediately torn down to buying aircraft that cannot be used. The common element to the stories is the absence of any reported prosecution or even discipline for those responsible. We now have yet another example of spending huge amounts of money on failed programs because no one has the guts to cut off the money. The latest example is our $7.6 billion eradication campaign for poppy fields which has proven an utter failure. Yet, no one wants to be accused of being soft on drugs — so officials sending kept spending as we cut educational, scientific, environmental, and infrastructure programs at home. It is better to waste billions than make a tough decision in government.
An oversight investigation has found that poppy plant production in Afghanistan is now at an “all time high” after our $7.6 billion counternarcotics campaign. According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), places previously declared “poppy free” now have robust poppy production. Ten years and roughly 8 billion dollars and we not only did not eradicate poppies, we have a record production. Imagine what that money could have done in the United States. My kids have almost 40 students in their public school class in Fairfax County because there is no money to hire teachers. That apparently is not a problem but cutting off billions for a failed eradication campaign is unthinkable for government officials. After all, a few less educated kids are not alarming but a few politicians faced with tough decisions would be horrific.
Afghanistan has experienced a 50 percent increase in poppy-related proceeds from 2012 to 2013. Some of our closest allies have been accepting money from the United States while profiteering on poppy production for opium and heroin. The irony is that the CIA clearly knows this. So one branch is trying to eradicate poppies while another branch is actively helping those growing poppies. We apparently have a plan . . . its just a plan that no one can possibly understand.
The eradication campaigns have always had a dubious premise because they are fighting market forces. The annual profits from opium and other poppy-derived drugs is now $3 billion annually. There is demand and there will be supply to meet that demand. The $7.6 billion spent over ten years is just three worth of profits and this money is not all going to farmers. The result is obvious. It is not a problem traced to the views of Bin Laden. It is a problem traced to the views of Adam Smith.
Source: Global Post
Karen S: “Nation building does not work in other countries.”
That’s an overbroad generalization.
Karen S: “You can help people achieve democracy but you can’t do it for them.”
That’s better. Nation-building does work and has worked, but not all countries are the same.
It’s like teaching. Not all students have the same aptitude to learn the subject you teach. Different countries have different aptitudes for nation-building. Iraq, with its challenges, was always a better prospect for nation-building than Afghanistan. Afghanistan seems to possess a particularly low aptitude with particularly adverse environmental influences for nation-building, which is why it served so well as a safe, outlaw space for al Qaeda in the first place.
The task has been reconfiguring Afghanistan so it cannot become safe, outlaw space for terrorists again. We haven’t figured that out yet.
When GEN McChrystal took over in Afghanistan, he said something that made sense to me: our problems in Afghanistan to date were less due to funding or troop numbers than method. At the point, Counterinsurgency had just been proven in Iraq. That didn’t mean the COIN-Iraq template could be transplanted to Afghanistan with the same effect – Afghanistan is not Iraq – but COIN-Iraq at least pointed the way to a better method for Afghanistan.
Like in teaching, the amount of money spent in nation-building is an important logistical factor, and the money tap is the factor over which government has the most control, but it’s not the most important factor. More important factors include method on the ground and command parameters. Along with other more-practical factors, they determine whether the money is spent productively.
Which is to say, I wouldn’t look at the dollar amounts only. Yes, Obama dramatically raised the funding for the Afghanistan mission. But to identify why our return on investment has disappointed, I would first take a harder look at the method and parameters of the Afghanistan mission that have accompanied the funding increase under Obama.
Simply more money thrown away in a failed war on drugs fought with the same tactics as the war on terror. In over 40 years not one iota of an affect on availability, demand or use. Just vast amounts spent, people employed, rights violated, people imprisoned and Killed.
To add to dlet60 and Mike Appleton, the Taliban had already eradicated the poppy fields. It was the CIA that brought them back. Another perk for the big banks that would fail if the drug money was cut off. This is a very old problem. The biggest criminals have an arm in the CIA and elsewhere in the government
dlet60 is correct. We have long operated under the principle that loyalty is merely another commodity to be purchased. Since we recognize that this is a morally corrupt notion, the government has traditionally sought to either hide the practice or label it something else. The recipients of our largesse are not appreciative, of course, because they also recognize the corruption. Therefore, the loyalty remains only as long as the cash flows. To a large extent, our foreign policy is based on the mistress model.
Will there ever be a paradigm shift away from a federal government that is “too big to fail” and into one that is “too big to succeed”?
“In other words, celebrities, pundits, and politicians—Left, center, and Right—who view, hew, and sometimes pursue the presidency as the lead part in a drama, reality television show, or documentary film will continue to give us a less republican political reality.”
http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/20/how-we-can-choose-a-constitutional-president-in-a-celebrity-age/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=ac0ed39e3b-RSS_DAILY_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-ac0ed39e3b-79248369
This is not a surprise, The truth is that the lies we are being told are horrendous as is the fraud being committed. The US gov’t and the CIA have been intimately involved in the opium and heroin production and trade since at least 1947 with the support of Chiang Kai Shek’s warlords production in the Golden Triangle of SE Asia, Air America during the VietNam War, the Contras and cocaine and Oliver North in the early 80s and now our soldiers patrolling and guarding the poppy fields of Afghanistan, all to the benefit of the CIA’s black budgets. Actually going back to the Opium Wars in China when the US was merely the junior partner to the UK. Who are we kidding?
Reblogged this on SiriusCoffee and commented:
It always amazes me how liberals believe that flagrant waste and corruption will always be resolved if just moved domestically. “Imagine blah blah blah”, and somehow it would all be better. it’s the system, not the spending. The spending is just a symptom of the corruption that is Washington DC.
Another example of indiscriminately throwing money at the problem, it is problem not unique to the federal government but one that it certainly excels at.
Karen,
As I said in another thread: without a compass, every course looks good!
Past behavior predicts future behavior.
Want more of this? Then stay the course.
Olly:
Politicians just walk away whistling from the consequences of their actions and decisions. They don’t actually change course, or seem to recall that they are spending other people’s money.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Citizens should have an accounting on where their money is spent. If it was ineffective, then you turn off the tap and try something else.
Nation building does not work in other countries. You can help people achieve democracy but you can’t do it for them.
Who would expect anything more from those engaged in high paying jobs that facilitate greed, killing, torture, rape, and plunder?
If you can’t laugh at this progressive creation called ‘the administrative state’ then you’ll go mad. It is indefensible, but progressives in both major political parties will not let that stop them from pointing the finger at the failures of “the other side”.
The Bush II farms are doing well eh? (<b<First Day of Spring 2009)
James Risen in his book ” Pay any Price” documents how billions of dollars were secretly sent to Iran and distributed as cash to corrupt officials without any accountability to the the American people. I am not surprised by this post about wasted billions of dollars used to eradicate illegal poppy production in Afghanistan. Republicans and Democrats have been intimated to not challenge rampant governmental corruption out of fear of being labelled soft on terrorism. This corruption has now become normalized behavior. I agree with Mr. Turley. Imagine if those billions of dollars had been used to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, as well as education and medical research. Mr. Risen faces possible imprisonment for telling us the truth. Mainstream media has kept the truth about his case and other whistleblowers hidden from the public. If the government succeeds in stifling honest journalists we will surely lose our democracy.
This is not a surprise to anyone who has been keeping up with the news. The President is a joke and even the Afghani farmers know it.
Since we have been using CR we have hardly been cutting what we should. And the Department of Education should be abolished. Although, Obama could blame cuts to the CDC on this. I can see his explanation now. “I am so angry. I just learned on television that we are paying them to stop growing poppies and they are doing it anyway. That money could have gone to for my latest …. opps could have gone to the CDC to cure Ebola.”
We, the United States, have become the World’s biggest Joke….
I’m sure the added production is for muffins and bagels.