Tag: Defense Spending

War On Terror

I remember after the 9/11 attacks and the beginning of the War on Terror…..do you?

The question was posed….are we better off today than we were in 2001?

$6 trillion (that is trillion with a “T”) and the answer in most quarters is ….NO!

After all these years…the ordinances used and the people lost and we are not any better off?

But the M-IC is pushing hard to keep troops around the world as a deterrent to terrorism….is it really worth the cost….in lives and equipment?

The national security establishment is pushing against the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan by President Trump following almost two decades of combat. Even Republicans are warning Trump that he is repeating one of the foreign policy mistakes of Barack Obama.

One of the most astonishing recent arguments against a withdrawal from Afghanistan was made by former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who said that terrorist groups that “pose a threat to us are stronger now” than they were before 9/11. He said the United States faces Al Qaeda and Islamic State alumni who are “orders of magnitude greater” than before and who “have access to much more destructive capabilities.”

How are we worse off than 2001? According to the Watson Institute, the war on terror has cost the United States over $6 trillion, 800,000 people have died as a direct result of the violence of these conflicts, and nearly 38 million people have been displaced or made refugees. According to the Washington Post, some 775,000 American forces have been sent to Afghanistan since 2001, and more than 2,000 of them died.

The United States poured billions of dollars into reconstruction projects in Iraq and Afghanistan under the notion that economic development would check the growth of terrorism. Yet after all this blood and treasure, one of the most senior American officials and a former combat general in the war on terror says Al Qaeda is stronger than it was before 9/11.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/518204-the-truth-about-the-war-on-terror

Let’s look at another one of those made up wars that has done little…..the War On Drugs.

By contrast that “war” has been raging for damn near 50 years and about $1 trillion wasted with no end in sight….we just keep wasting money chasing some imaginary victory.

In my opinion and others as well…the War on Terror has wasted lives and money and has not accomplished a victory after $6 trillion (that is trillion with a “T”)…..

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Closing Thought–23Oct20

Talk about a waste of time!

I am always going on about the waste of taxpayer’s money and I have found yet more evidence of just how silly this system has become.

The Supreme Court will rule on the use of Pentagon funds for that silly wall on the Southern border.

The $2.5 billion on the table in an upcoming Supreme Court hearing on use of Pentagon funds to build the border wall has already been paid out, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed to Military Times on Tuesday.

The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would take up a challenge to one of the Trump administration’s U.S-Mexico border fencing funding workarounds, specifically $2.5 billion in military counterdrug money re-allocated in 2019 to be paid out to contractors by the Army Corps of Engineers.

“Those funds cover 129 miles across six projects,” Mitchell said, contract awards for fencing in New Mexico, Arizona and California, according to USACE data. The Pentagon could not provide details on how many of those miles have actually been completed.

The original lawsuit, first filed in Texas last year, challenged the legality of using those funds to build fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. But as it wound its way through the courts, Pentagon spokesman Army Lt. Col. Christian Mitchell confirmed to Military Times on Tuesday, all of that money has been paid out.

A Texas judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs late last year, putting an injunction on any further border construction. But a Justice Department appeal lifted that injunction, and last summer, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote decided not to hear a challenge that would have reinstated it.

“The Court’s decision to let construction continue nevertheless I fear, may operate, in effect, as a final judgment,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his dissent, on behalf of the four justices who voted to hear the case.

It’s unclear, however, what would happen if SCOTUS rules against the administration. The original lower-court ruling stopped construction, but did not cancel contracts or force refunds, which could be the case again this time around.

In total, the Pentagon diverted $6.1 billion in 2019 to fund the border wall, including $3.6 billion in military construction funds.

(Military News)

Once again the courts are a day late and we are dollars short.

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Trump/Biden On Security And Defense

AS the election of 2020 draws closer and some people still are not sure who they will vote for (doubt that assumption but I can hope) so I try to help all those uncommitted voters learn the issues and where the two stand…..

My main concern is foreign policy and that will include defense and national security issues as well….this post will look at where Trump/Biden stand on these issues.

U.S. President Donald Trump: The Trump administration has withdrawn the U.S. from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and (almost) the 1992 Open Skies Treaty. It has loosened the Missile Technology Control Regime’s restrictions on selling armed drones to foreign governments amid concerns about China’s defense relationships in the Middle East. As of press time, administration officials have been unwilling to extend the 2010 New START nuclear pact with Russia, which expires in February, insisting that a new version include Russia’s growing arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons and China, whose smaller arsenal is rapidly expanding and which appears unwilling to sign such an agreement.

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden: Favored by arms control advocates, Biden has promised to renew New START and would likely accept Russia’s offer to extend it five years without preconditions. He also said he would rejoin the Iran nuclear deal if it returned to full compliance described in the agreement. While Trump has loosened restrictions on the use of landmines by the U.S. military in conflict areas, Biden has said the move unnecessarily puts civilians at risk and that he would reverse it.

Defense News has taken a look at both candidates and positions…..the subjects covered by Defense News…

Nuclear Weapons…..Defense Budget…..Afghanistan, Iraq And Iran…..Arm Sales…..NATO And Europe…..Great Power Competition…..

These are subjects that need to be addressed by the candidates….but since both are too busy trying to make the other look bad…..

I like Biden on nuclear weapons

I dislike both Trump and Biden’s stand on the defense budget

I like Trump’s stand on bringing troops home…just not convinced he will do it after election.  Biden will end wars but leave troops in place….what part of that is the end?  Don’t like Biden’s explanation.

Dislike Trump’s selling arms to anybody with a checkbook….and Biden has not said a whole lot so none of his thoughts are up for analysis.

I like Biden’s idea of repairing alliances but not any expansion of NATO.

Both are on record as a extreme dislike for China but all they have is sanctions and stuff……not going to change a damn thing.

As you can see why I have a dilemma since foreign policy is a major driving force in my vote…..for neither candidate impresses me with a hard good agenda in world affairs.

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Time To Re-Think The Pentagon Budget

In twenty years we have spent trillions on unnecessary wars…..and can we state without qualification that we are a safer nation because of them?

The pandemic we are now fighting has shown us that we need to re-think war and focus on the survival of this country.

The inadequate response of both the federal and state governments to the Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the United States, creating what could only be called a national security crisis. More than 190,000 Americans are dead, approximately half of them people of color. Yelp data show that more than 132,000 businesses have already closed and census data suggest that, thanks to lost wages, nearly 17% of Americans with children can’t afford to feed them enough food.

In this same period, a number of defense contractors have been doing remarkably well. Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s top contractor, reported that, compared to 2019, its earnings are actually up—yes, up! The company’s success led the financial magazine Barron’s to call it a “pandemic star.” And those profits are only likely to grow, given the Trump administration’s recent approval of a 10-year deal to sell $62 billion worth of its F-16s to Taiwan.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/09/14/national-insecurity-and-pentagon-budget

Congress needs to step up and do the hard lifting since no one else will….but they are a worthless, lazy bunch and I feel they will do what high dollar donors want…not what is best for the nation.

More Americans have now died from COVID-19 than from the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Yet the United States is poised to continue spending more money on the Pentagon than the next 10 countries combined, with some 1 million troops deployed in about 175 countries. In other words, there’s no end in sight for our forever wars.

Monday marked the 19th anniversary of the vote to pass the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, a blank check to deploy U.S. military personnel anywhere in the world in the name of going after terrorists. Our country’s response to that attack has had unintended and tragic consequences: war profiteering by military contractors, traumatic impact to our soldiers, and massive numbers of refugees and civilian casualties around the world.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/09/15/its-time-repeal-presidents-license-endless-war

This pandemic has shown the nation just how inadequate our social skills are….we can go fight wars without end but we are dumb-founded by a virus.

Maybe now is the right time to start putting the nation and its people first…and I do not mean another round of stim cash that only benefits those that do not need the stim.

Wall Street wants more and more cash…..

When Wall Street receives a major boost from the US Federal Reserve it can always be relied upon to come back and demand more. This phenomenon, one could say a law of political economy, has been on display again this week.

On Wednesday, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) set out its new framework for monetary policy. It committed itself to maintaining interest rates at near zero levels, for as far as the eye can see. It would also maintain its purchases of financial assets, at least to the tune of $120 billion a month—nearly $1.5 trillion a year—and intervene even more aggressively should there be a return of financial turbulence.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/19/wall-s19.html

Time for this nation to once again become a single entity and not the wandering bands of tribes that spend all their energy sniping at each other.

Pay Attention!  Your life is depending on it!

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The Myth Of The M-IC

I have written many times on the power that the Military-Industrial Complex (M-IC) holds over our nation….and I have even gone so far as to agree (some what) with accusation from Trump that the generals are in the pocket of the M-IC…..

Here are my thoughts on the M-IC…….https://lobotero.com/2019/01/28/what-is-the-military-industrial-complex/

And there is more……https://lobotero.com/2019/03/20/the-military-industrial-complex/

Then there is the shock that I agreed with Trump on anything…….https://lobotero.com/2020/09/09/in-defense-sort-of/

To be fair not everyone agrees with me about the M-IC top heavy with generals and they they are influenced by the corporations.

The rebuttal comes from the American Enterprise Institute, a group that gets donations from the M-IC and in this case is being used as a PR weapon to counter the opinions voice by me and the president…..

It is hard to think of any U.S. president that Donald Trump resembles less than Dwight D. Eisenhower. Yet Trump managed to evoke the comparison this week, when he charged that senior American military officials are more interested in serving the interests of arms manufacturers than in serving the interests of the U.S. The military, he said, advocates war “so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”

For some observers, the allegation brought to mind Eisenhower’s farewell address in January 1961, in which he cautioned that a mighty “military-industrial complex” could “endanger our liberties” and strangle the American economy. Since then, Eisenhower’s speech has been cited by critics who warn that an expansive foreign policy will ruin the nation’s prosperity and freedom alike.

Yet just as Trump was wrong in arguing that Pentagon officials are motivated by greed rather than patriotism, Eisenhower — a far wiser leader — was more wrong than right about the military industrial-complex.

Trump, Ike and the Myth of the Military-industrial Complex

I wonder how much that rousing defense of the M-IC will cost the industry?

Just a point here….where do you think that retired generals go to work after their retirement?….I mean after they write their book….that is.

Go to the corporations website and look at their officers…..they are heavy with generals…..how do you think certain weapon systems make it through the process even when they are proven to be waste of money (think F-35)?

Not all generals are in the pocket of defense contractors but the ones thinking of retirement are thinking of a way to make cash out of their service.

Once again….I will agree with Trump on this (on principle that is)…..

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DARPA!

Do you know where those taxpayer bucks go?

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

This is where all those special weapons are researched….those secret weapons……some even sound like science fiction…..lab grown blood….or plant eating robots…..etc…….

For every one of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s wild successes, there seem to be a plethora of wild failures – projects like mechanical elephants or telepathy research. What makes DARPA so unique is its ability to go outside the red tape of bureaucracy to innovate. DARPA isn’t subject to the same acquisition rules as other agencies, which means it has fewer restrictions on the scientists and innovators it can hire and the salaries it can offer.

The agency also has fewer financial limitations, enabling it to invest in longshot projects with the hopes they’ll pay off – they’re basically the military’s innovative venture capitalists.

Here are some of the more interesting projects to come out of DARPA’s “high-risk, high-reward” environment.

https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2020/09/04/8-weird-darpa-projects-make-science-fiction-seem-like-real-life/

Now this brings me to the interview that Trump gave Woodward…..while the media is focusing on his pandemic comments there are others that should be just as important……like his disclosure of secret weapons systems…..

President Trump bragged about a supposedly secret nuclear weapons system in an interview with Bob Woodward, according to excerpts from the veteran journalist’s new book.

Trump discussed the weapons system while reflecting on how close the United States and North Korea came to nuclear war in 2017, according to excerpts from “Rage” published Wednesday by The Washington Post, where Woodward is an associate editor.

“I have built a nuclear — a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about,” Trump told Woodward, according to the Post.

“We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before,” Trump added, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. “There’s nobody — what we have is incredible.”

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/515700-trump-disclosed-secret-weapons-system-to-woodward-book

Could this “secret” weapon be the one that has already been reported?

The new warhead was first announced in the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review which, unveiled in February 2018, framed the weapons system as “a comparatively low-cost and near term modification to an existing capability that will help counter any mistaken perception of an exploitable ‘gap’ in U.S. regional deterrence capabilities.”

The W76-2 warhead — which, with an explosive yield of roughly five kilotons, has a smaller explosive yield than either of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — was subsequently deployed aboard the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee at the end of 2019, according to Defense News.

https://taskandpurpose.com/military-tech/trump-nuclear-weapons-w76-2-low-yield-nuke

So is this the “secret” weapon referred to by Trump….or are there more that he will blurt out?

DARPA is the bottomless pit of DC……money goes in and no one knows where it goes from there.

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Address Military Redundancy

These days of an ever expanding Defense budget and no plan to try and rein in the out of control spending….I had a thought…..

I have often asked myself the question about the amount of redundancy within the US military.

3 service Air Force, 4 separate special ops, on and on…….

Take armor for instance….the Army has its force and the Marines have theirs…..why?

Why not have one Air Force, 1 special ops, one armor?

Well the Marines have decided to end their armor program…..

Marine Corps M1A1 Abrams tanks of the 2nd Tank Battalion left Camp Lejeune, N.C., for the last time this week as part of the service’s sweeping modernization plan that envisions a more agile force.

Tank units on the East and West coasts shuttered this month and began hauling their armor to military depots, the service said.

The Marine Corps will eventually divest of all three of its active tank battalions as it moves from a “second land army” back to its maritime roots of defending ships at sea, island-hopping and battling for contested coastlines, in preparation for potential conflict with near-peer adversaries such as China.

“We have sufficient evidence to conclude that this capability, despite its long and honorable history in the wars of the past, is operationally unsuitable for our highest-priority challenges in the future,” Commandant Gen. David Berger wrote of the tanks in a March plan for the service’s overhaul. “Heavy ground armor capability will continue to be provided by the U.S. Army.”

https://www.stripes.com/news/marine-corps/a-farewell-to-armor-marine-corps-shuts-down-tank-units-hauls-away-m1a1s-1.639355

I believe this is a good idea that needs to expand to a re-evaluation of the military and determine where money can be saved and end the redundancies.

Of course the M-IC will start to panic at the prospect of the loss of profit……but sorry this country needs an upgrade far more pressing than some fighter jet that cost too damn much to be useful.  (F-35)…..a little consolidation could solve so many fiscal problems……sadly this is a dream that will never be realized…too many chiefs want to keep their position of power and the country can be damned.

It is the 21st century and time for the US to stop believing that the next war will be a repeat of World War Two in tactics.

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Screw Service People!

Closing Thought–21Aug20

The Congress and Trump have just approved the new massive Defense Budget…..with the help of Democrats I might add…..and now with all the cash for new weapons and such the attack will be on the miltary health care…..

Shortly after both chambers of Congress approved a $740 billion Defense Department budget for fiscal year 2021, Pentagon officials are reportedly pushing for more than $2 billion in cuts to military healthcare over the next five years, potentially threatening the coverage of millions of personnel and their families amid a global pandemic.

Politico reported Sunday that the proposed $2.2 billion cut to the military healthcare system is part of a “sweeping effort” by Defense Secretary Mark Esper to “eliminate inefficiencies within the Pentagon’s coffers.”

“Ever notice that it’s never a cut to things used to send kids to war?” asked Josh Moon of the Alabama Political Reporter. “It’s always—always—a cut to the promises we make to get them to volunteer for us. What a disgrace.”

According to Politico, “Esper and his deputies have argued that America’s private health system can pick up the slack” for any servicemembers who lose coverage.

“Roughly 9.5 million active-duty personnel, military retirees, and their dependents rely on the military health system, which is the military’s sprawling government-run healthcare framework that operates hundreds of facilities around the world,” Politico noted. “The military health system also provides care through TRICARE, which enables military personnel and their families to obtain civilian healthcare outside of military networks.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/17/what-disgrace-pentagon-weighing-22-billion-cuts-military-healthcare-just-after

This is one of the “entitlements” that is promised to the serving military and their families

Recently I read about the poor condition of military hospitals…..

Incredible waste is, of course, natural to Washington, particularly in the trillion dollar national security budget—which includes nuclear bombs, intelligence, and veterans’ costs. Three years ago, when I suggested “16 Ways to Cut Defense Spending,” one of the cost savings I wrote about was duplicative hospital costs, this from a system of separate Army, Navy, and Air Force medical services. They should be combined into a single system, but imagine the screaming about lost jobs.

The system was designed after World War I, when wounded could not be easily transported from one part of America to another and long before helicopters and super highways. It is part of the Tricare network, which takes nearly $50 billion yearly out of the Pentagon budget. It includes 55 hospitals and 373 clinics and gives free treatment to military retirees and their families for the rest of their lives. Then there is also the Veterans Administration hospital network with 152 medical centers and almost 800 outpatient clinics.

Why Military Hospitals Are Unhealthy and Inefficient

This is unacceptable…we ask so much from our troops and their families then we should hold good our promises to them…whatever that may be.

This is shameful on so many levels and no American seems willing to speak up…..

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Battle Of The Pentagon

As most Americans are aware of, at least not those that read IST, the Pentagon gets money it does not need.

I have written before that as long as the people are calling for defunding this or that….why not start looking more closely at the budget of the Pentagon….I mean the waste there out stretches the imagination and they get away with it.

Maybe just defund out endless wars would be a better place to start.

Arguments for “ending endless war” dovetail seamlessly with the M4BL invest-divest framework. Indeed, M4BL has issued a call to cut military expenditures and reallocate funds to domestic infrastructure and community wellbeing. But the similarities go beyond shared demands to shift funding priorities. The call to end America’s permanent war footing involves a transformative vision of its own: abandoning a posture of American military dominance.

Rethinking U.S. military primacy is a necessary corollary to ending state-sanctioned violence at home because America’s wars abroad sustain and feed into militarized and racialized domestic policing. Beyond the conveyor belt of equipment, training, and manpower that circulates between America’s wars – within our borders and overseas – lie massive vested interests in what today is best understood as the military-industrial-policing complex. And this complex profits from and entrenches the very forms of racialized state violence that protesters oppose.

Defund America’s Endless Wars

Recently the Progressives tried to introduce a b ill that would cut the Pentagon’s budget by 10%…….centrists Dems went hand in hand with Repubes to defeat the idea of the cut……but the idea is gaining popularity and has a good chance of winning this debate…

This comes on the heels of two major votes in the House and the Senate to cut the Pentagon budget by 10 percent. Both amendments were soundly defeated.

Yet while the picture may look bleak, there is cause for optimism about reducing the Pentagon budget. In fact, conditions look more favorable today than they have at any time for at least a decade. That’s owed to organizing inside of Congress, an energized progressive foreign policy movement, and a new national reckoning over budget priorities propelled into the nation’s consciousness by the national uprisings over systemic white supremacy and the coronavirus crisis.

Comparing the recent votes to cut the Pentagon budget with a similar vote in 2017 illustrates the point. Three years ago, the House voted on an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill to cut the Pentagon budget by one percent, or just $7 billion. That year, 35 percent of House Democrats supported the cut. Contrast that with today’s House effort, led by Representatives Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan, which sought to chop 10 percent, or $74 billion, off the Pentagon’s topline. Today, 40 percent of House Democrats supported the amendment, despite the fact that members of their own party wrote the bill. And in a parallel Senate effort, led by Senators Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, and Elizabeth Warren, nearly half of the Democratic Caucus voted for the amendment, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has not been known to be supportive of such measures.

Why we will win the fight to cut the Pentagon budget

Not to worry…the M-IC machine will hit back and help keep any cuts from happening….this piece gives good sound reasons for not cutting the Pentagon budget….

It’s election season. Politicians at both the federal and state levels are looking for ways of bolstering their reelection prospects. One way of doing this is to stage public spectacles, the modern version of ancient Rome’s gladiatorial games, designed to gain support for politicians from average voters. The most recent example of this strategy in action has been a campaign of attacks on so-called Big Tech: companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google.

There have been antitrust investigations and even calls to break up these tech giants. Whether it is lawsuits by state attorneys general or hearings before congressional committees, the goal is to demonize these companies primarily for their success. The trouble is that in seeking to score near-term political points, these politicians are not only maligning great American companies but threatening the nation’s economic health and national security.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2020/08/01/election-year_attacks_on_big_tech_will_undercut_peace_and_prosperity_115513.html

Did you see where they say that these acts will threaten our economic health and national security?

That is M-IC speak that actually means it will cut our profits and that is unacceptable.

Finally there is a push to defund the Pentagon and it has bi-partisanship…..plus it will help defund the police as well…..

Many liberals and progressives in the Democratic Party have been loudly calling for the defunding of police departments around the country after the tragic death of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer. While defunding the police — not to be confused with disbanding the police — means different things to different people, most advocates propose redirecting a portion of city and county police budgets to social programs, mental health intervention, combating homelessness, and affordable housing programs.

Conservatives and Republicans have generally pushed back against calls to defund the police. They typically maintain that the level of police misconduct is overstated, that police departments just need to be reformed, and that violent crime and property crime will increase if police department budgets are cut. In response to some major cities calling for defunding the police, Donald Trump simply said, “We won’t be defunding our police. We won’t be dismantling our police. We won’t be disbanding our police. We won’t be ending our police force.” Certainly the president knows that funding levels for police departments are decided on the local level without any input whatsoever from the federal government?

Defund the Pentagon

Just thinking out loud!

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Defund Afghanistan

These days there is lots about defunding this or that…from the police to the Pentagon……check what was written about this…….

https://lobotero.com/2020/06/09/de-fund-the-pd/

As long as we are calling for all this defunding….why not defund the US longest and costliest war…Afghanistan?

As the coronavirus pandemic overwhelmed the Afghan health system in June, doctors rallied in Kabul, calling upon the International Monetary Fund to rescind a recently granted $220 million emergency loan to the Afghan government to help with the COVID-19 crisis. In support, Sayed Ekram Afazali, head of Integrity Watch Afghanistan, a local group fighting corruption, said that such “monopolization in the spending of the aid . . . creates severe vulnerabilities and it removes the trust” in the government owing to embezzlement and mismanagement. The Kabul rally is just one of many protests against government corruption in Afghanistan. Doctors in Herat, for instance, protested against unpaid salaries. In remote Ghor Province, security forces killed six protesters angry at the distribution of food aid.

These and other similar actions acknowledge a counterintuitive but simple truth: Aid to Afghanistan is accelerating state collapse because it is channeled through a government that is dysfunctional and corrupt. John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said the Taliban and other insurgents draw attention to government corruption and use it to “undermine public support for the government, garner recruits to their cause and weaken the government’s bargaining position during future peace negotiations.” We believe that the current system of centralized government is the cause of systemic injustices that drive this current conflict. After 20 years of this system, there are no technical fixes to corruption that could win public trust. Rather, the entire government must be defunded, dismantled, disbanded, and rebuilt anew by the Afghan people. The coming intra-Afghan dialogue will be an opportunity to do just that.

https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/defund-afghanistan

This makes perfect sense….Trump is trying to end this costly war and the Congress and Hawks are fighting that tooth and nail…..

Time for the US to come home and save the cash spent on Afghanistan….this country needs the money to repair itself and yet those idiot warmongers are looking for other spots for their expansionism.

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