The GAO figures that for the $10 billion we've spent on the effort, "only 2 of 105 army units are assessed as being fully capable of conducting their primary mission and efforts to develop the army continue to face challenges." No police units are up to snuff. Without security, there can be no political stability in Afghanistan, and without political stability, it's back to 1989, when the Taliban were in charge. Full Story »
Posted by Jeff Clark
With Afghanistan generally off the media radar screen, it's encouraging that a metropolitan daily has an editorial drawing attention to the recent GAO report on the lack of success in expensive efforts to train troops and police. It's a 16 billion-dollar boondoggle worthy of Bush and his Pentagon. The editorial is concise, but it gives useful hyperlinks to the GAO report and other articles.
While there's so good information here, there's no strong argument being made. It seems only half written.
The editorial gets the current situation fairly well, but misses a few points. The Afghani people threw out the British colonialists, and they threw out the Russian colonialists. If they are now successfully throwing out the American colonialists, are we on the wrong side of history? The piece presumes the Afghanistan occupation is a good war, but that is questionable. The Taliban offered to turn Osama bin Laden over to a third country court for trial, and Bush refused that in order to preserve his posture for invading and bombing the rubble in Afghanistan. This war seems to be generating far more terrorists and opium than before the invasion.
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