The U.S. War Addiction: Funding Enemies to Maintain Trillion Dollar Racket
- Thread starter Stretch
- Start date
can you find any war or fighting in the world that US don't affect on it ??? even the small wars between Tribes in Afirca ???huh??
Yet another CONSERVATIVE says,
Time for America to Abandon Afghanistan
Time for America to Abandon Afghanistan | The National Interest
Experts and pundits were stunned last week when Taliban forces overran most of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz. Although government troops appear to have retaken portions of the city, they were able to do so only with substantial assistance from the U.S. combat units that are still in the country. Now General John Campbell, the U.S. commander, is urging President Obama to delay the planned withdrawal of the remaining 9,800 U.S. troops and to retain a permanent garrison that is much larger than the president’s plan for 1,000 military personnel. If President Obama unwisely complies with that request, Afghanistan will be on its way to being a permanent nation-building quagmire for Washington.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) asked the question that many Americans likely harbor: why are we still in Afghanistan more than 14 years after the initial invasion in response to the Taliban regime’s decision to shelter al Qaeda? It is an especially pertinent question since even the U.S. military concedes that there is no longer a significant al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan. We are now (and have been for several years) almost exclusively at war with the Taliban, whose agenda (while socially repulsive) is focused on that country and does not pose a credible threat to the American homeland. Senator Paul is absolutely correct that it is well past time for anti-Taliban Afghans to step up and defend their own country without relying on the United States.
Unfortunately, what happened in Kunduz is all too typical of the fruits of U.S. foreign policy over the past half century. U.S. administrations seem to have a knack for picking corrupt, unmotivated foreign clients who are spectacularly unable to prevail against domestic adversaries. The Obama administration’s fiasco of trying to train a cadre of “moderate” Syrian rebels to counter both Bashar al-Assad’s regime and ISIS is only the most recent example. Despite spending more than $400 million, the number of graduates from the program that are still fighting is in the single digits. That training effort may well set a new record for an expensive, ineffectual government boondoggle.
Then there is the Iraqi army, trained and equipped at great expense to American taxpayers. When ISIS launched its offensive last year to capture Mosul and other cities, Iraqi troops seemed intent on setting speed records to flee their positions and let the insurgents take over with barely a struggle. ISIS captured vast quantities of sophisticated military hardware that Baghdad’s troops abandoned in their haste.
That episode reminded older Americans of the performance of the U.S.-backed ARVN—the so-called army of the so-called Republic of Vietnam--in early 1975. The collapse of the ARVN’s resistance to the offensive that communist North Vietnam launched that spring was shockingly rapid and complete. Indeed, it was so fast that the U.S. embassy in Saigon was barely able to evacuate its diplomatic personnel before North Vietnamese troops captured the city.
These and other incidents beg the question of why the foreign clients U.S. leaders choose habitually perform so badly. They are characterized by thin domestic support, poor organization, and lousy morale. Their domestic adversaries always seem to be better organized, more competent, and far more dedicated. Given the extent of the failures in so many different settings, Washington should realize that lavishing funds on preferred clients cannot make them credible political and military players in their countries. And continuing to backstop such inept clients with U.S. troops merely wastes American lives. Despite General Campbell’s wishes, it appears that we are on the verge of being taught that lesson yet again—this time in Afghanistan.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The National Interest, is the author of ten books and more than 600 articles on international issues. His latest book, coauthored with Malou Innocent, is Perilous Partners: The Benefits and Pitfalls of America’s Alliances with Authoritarian Regimes (2015).
Oh by the way, in case you are wondering, yes, I do condemn Obama's announced decision to prolong our involvement in that stupid war.
Time for America to Abandon Afghanistan
Time for America to Abandon Afghanistan | The National Interest
Experts and pundits were stunned last week when Taliban forces overran most of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz. Although government troops appear to have retaken portions of the city, they were able to do so only with substantial assistance from the U.S. combat units that are still in the country. Now General John Campbell, the U.S. commander, is urging President Obama to delay the planned withdrawal of the remaining 9,800 U.S. troops and to retain a permanent garrison that is much larger than the president’s plan for 1,000 military personnel. If President Obama unwisely complies with that request, Afghanistan will be on its way to being a permanent nation-building quagmire for Washington.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) asked the question that many Americans likely harbor: why are we still in Afghanistan more than 14 years after the initial invasion in response to the Taliban regime’s decision to shelter al Qaeda? It is an especially pertinent question since even the U.S. military concedes that there is no longer a significant al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan. We are now (and have been for several years) almost exclusively at war with the Taliban, whose agenda (while socially repulsive) is focused on that country and does not pose a credible threat to the American homeland. Senator Paul is absolutely correct that it is well past time for anti-Taliban Afghans to step up and defend their own country without relying on the United States.
Unfortunately, what happened in Kunduz is all too typical of the fruits of U.S. foreign policy over the past half century. U.S. administrations seem to have a knack for picking corrupt, unmotivated foreign clients who are spectacularly unable to prevail against domestic adversaries. The Obama administration’s fiasco of trying to train a cadre of “moderate” Syrian rebels to counter both Bashar al-Assad’s regime and ISIS is only the most recent example. Despite spending more than $400 million, the number of graduates from the program that are still fighting is in the single digits. That training effort may well set a new record for an expensive, ineffectual government boondoggle.
Then there is the Iraqi army, trained and equipped at great expense to American taxpayers. When ISIS launched its offensive last year to capture Mosul and other cities, Iraqi troops seemed intent on setting speed records to flee their positions and let the insurgents take over with barely a struggle. ISIS captured vast quantities of sophisticated military hardware that Baghdad’s troops abandoned in their haste.
That episode reminded older Americans of the performance of the U.S.-backed ARVN—the so-called army of the so-called Republic of Vietnam--in early 1975. The collapse of the ARVN’s resistance to the offensive that communist North Vietnam launched that spring was shockingly rapid and complete. Indeed, it was so fast that the U.S. embassy in Saigon was barely able to evacuate its diplomatic personnel before North Vietnamese troops captured the city.
These and other incidents beg the question of why the foreign clients U.S. leaders choose habitually perform so badly. They are characterized by thin domestic support, poor organization, and lousy morale. Their domestic adversaries always seem to be better organized, more competent, and far more dedicated. Given the extent of the failures in so many different settings, Washington should realize that lavishing funds on preferred clients cannot make them credible political and military players in their countries. And continuing to backstop such inept clients with U.S. troops merely wastes American lives. Despite General Campbell’s wishes, it appears that we are on the verge of being taught that lesson yet again—this time in Afghanistan.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The National Interest, is the author of ten books and more than 600 articles on international issues. His latest book, coauthored with Malou Innocent, is Perilous Partners: The Benefits and Pitfalls of America’s Alliances with Authoritarian Regimes (2015).
Oh by the way, in case you are wondering, yes, I do condemn Obama's announced decision to prolong our involvement in that stupid war.
The US can't pull out of Afghanistan. Big Pharma won't let them.
" In Afghan Fields the poppies grow, row on row to fuel Big Pharma's needs." (sung to the tune of Flanders Fields).
Follow the money.
" In Afghan Fields the poppies grow, row on row to fuel Big Pharma's needs." (sung to the tune of Flanders Fields).
Follow the money.
Meh, we're also helping fund the nonsense buy purchasing oil from Saudi Arabia. We wouldn't need to but the tree huggers animosity towards Canada's oil industry means we'll be lucky to have more than a token oil industry in a few years. So instead we help fund Islamic terrorism and help perpetuate the wars in the Middle East.
The reality is, with the massive carbon footprint wars leave behind, our nice, blood-free oil is less environmentally damaging than Mid-East oil.
Then again, I've always believed that the "Western" oil producers should form their own oil cartel and tell OPEC to cram it, with walnuts.
The reality is, with the massive carbon footprint wars leave behind, our nice, blood-free oil is less environmentally damaging than Mid-East oil.
Then again, I've always believed that the "Western" oil producers should form their own oil cartel and tell OPEC to cram it, with walnuts.
Yup, it's all about the money:
The Tea Bagger Who Loves Wasting Billions on Cold War Weapons
The Tea Partier Who Loves Wasting Billions on Cold War Weapons - The Daily Beast
The Army said for years that it didn’t need quite so many tanks. That didn’t stop the head of Congress’s right-wing Freedom Caucus.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio’s 4th Congressional District hates federal spending, except when it’s for his own constituents. If his own district stands to benefit, the five-term Republican congressman and leader of the Tea Party-aligned House Freedom Caucus not only loves government pork—he’ll fight for it even if it hurts U.S. national security by redirecting funding away from vital programs.
Case in point: Jordan has pushed the government to shovel hundreds of millions of dollars into a factory in his district that makes tanks for the U.S. Army. These are tanks that, until this year, the Army did not want.
To be fair, Jordan is just maintaing a long tradition of pork-barrel politics. The tank factory in Lima has been “a favorite program for Ohio delegation earmarks, against the needs of the Army,” Mandy Smithberger, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the nonproft Project on Government Oversight watchdog group in Washington, D.C., told The Daily Beast.
The plant “has been one of the poster children for Congress adding funding for programs the military neither wants nor needs, for parochial reasons,” Smithberger added.
But Jordan has consistently portrayed himself as the enemy of wasteful government. “Federal government spending is out of control, and it is the responsibility of Congress to fix the problem,” Jordan claims on his official Website.
Jordan opposes federal funding for Planned Parenthood. He called the Export-Import Bank, which finances foreign purchases of American goods, a “waste of money.” Jordan is co-sponsoring a bill to cut federal food stamps, saying it will help to “move our country away from a culture of dependency and back toward a culture of work and upward mobility.”
Jordan championed the 2011 Budget Control Act that mandated across-the-board federal spending cuts. But Jordan was also instrumental in redirecting nearly $1 billion of the Army’s increasingly stressed budget toward building unnecessary tanks.
“We have long advocated for policies that put our fiscal house in order, and reducing our massive national debt should be one of our nation’s highest priorities,” Jordan and U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, wrote in a January op-ed. “But we shouldn’t do so by putting our national defense at risk.”
“This year’s appropriation of $120 million in additional funding for the Abrams tank program will go a long way towards doing that,” Jordan and Portman wrote, referring to the Army’s 2015 budget.
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