Things we don't understand - the Afghan war - part 6

This is probably my last post on this fascinating, sad topic. Stories from a military officer stationed at Baghram AFB made me realize how very little average Americans know about Afghanistan (part 1) or about how our military operates (part 2, part 5), either there or probably anywhere else. This is about how little we know about even trying to help people in a society and cultural context we know essentially nothing about and cannot understand. This story comes from the mainstream media, not my information source at Baghram.

Heartbreak

At page A11 (Friday, June 17, 2011), the Los Angeles Times reported that two years ago the State Department concluded that the billions of tax dollars had America spent on aid for Afghanistan was a "heartbreaking" failure. According to the Times, since then we have tried even harder to pursue the strategy that had failed. Maybe the idea was that trying harder, whatever that means (spending more, faster?), would work.

Apparently, trying harder didn't work. Recent U.S. government reports conclude that the large sums we have spent has "fueled corruption, distorted local economies and left Afghanistan with technology it won't be able to maintain after NATO forces leave." This was due to "incomplete analysis, poor planning" and some other U.S. failures. One former administrator said that the U.S. reasoned that spending large amounts of money would make Afghans like us.

Some of our efforts were hopelessly misguided. On one big hydroelectric project ($100 million), half the electricity went to insurgent controlled areas and the Taliban wound up charging local citizens for the electricity we enabled. They use that money to kill our troops. That's just logical because they hate our guts and our way of life.

How much has been spent? About $20 billion so far. $10.7 Billion under Bush and about $7 billion in 2009-2010, with about $3.2 billion planned for 2011. Not all of that was wasted, but we don't know how much was. Regardless, our own government concludes that our aid program failed.

Who is accountable?

I understand that complicated projects can go badly or fail entirely. Humans are not perfect. But when that happens there should be at least some accountability. However, under our broken system of government there usually is no accountability for "incomplete analysis, poor planning" and so on. The fact that unknown billions out of the $20 billion was wasted has no consequences for politicians and federal agencies. No one is accountable.

That is partly because no one can be identified who is to blame. And, it doesn't matter if the failure was under Democratic or Republican leadership. Under business as usual, there is no accountability for "small" or "routine" failures like this.

So far, we have spent about $425 billion in Afghanistan. I imagine we will spend at least another $150 billion before we reach some claimed "success" or simply leave. Remember the "Mission Accomplished" claim from the Iraq war? As we pull out and decrease spending, the Afghan economy will certainly collapse. According to the World Bank about 97% of Afghan economic output comes from international military and civilian spending.

Unless I am missing something very, very big, Afghanistan is a lost cause, if the goal was building some semblance of even a quasi-modern nation. Most of our money was wasted. The Taliban will come back into power and Afghanistan goes back to the dark ages, politically speaking. It may or may not become a new haven for terrorism. One thing that is sure, they will be growing poppies for opium like they never have before. After all, we will have left them nothing else viable. That's just one ramification of our failure.

So much for nation building. I wonder if Democrats, Republicans or the ivy league deep thinkers in federal agencies have learned much of anything from any of this? Probably not. After all, it's just our tax dollars. There's plenty more and wasting even lots of taxes carries no penalty. All regular voters can do is vote for a Democrat or Republican.

That's no choice at all.