From: Ramez Naam (mez@apexnano.com)
Date: Mon Feb 17 2003 - 13:26:39 MST
From: Dehede011@aol.com [mailto:Dehede011@aol.com]
> Having rid the Afghanistan of the Taliban you seem to
> be taking on the additional burden of supporting them.
> Even a little thought will show that your analysis is
> faulty.
Ron, let's for a moment assume that we just don't care about the
individuals who live in Afghanistan. Let's set aside any and all
humanitarian concern or feeling of responsibility for them and just
talk realpolitik.
Afghanistan has a history of instability and chaos that goes back 30
years. Every government there has fallen apart as feuding factions
and warlords took control and turned the country into a war zone. It
was this chaos that allowed the Taliban, who brought order, to come to
power.
From a purely selfish standpoint we don't want to allow such a thing
to happen again. We want there to be a democratic, affluent, stable
society in Afghanistan, because societies like that create fewer
terrorists.
So, you would think we would create a policy that would encourage such
a society to come into existence. Now, so far we've spent around $15
Billion on the war in Afghanistan, and continue to spend around $1.8
Billion a month there on military deployment. By contrast, we've
spent between $200 and $300 million on reconstruction and peace
keeping. To me this seems quite short sighted. It focuses resources
on the immediate crisis without investing in preventing the next
crisis.
Currently the UN has a peace keeping force that patrols Kabul, the
capital of Afghanistan. There are exactly 0 US personnel in this
peace keeping force. Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, has
repeatedly asked for a larger peace keeping force that can patrol the
entire country and help reign in the warlords. His requests have been
denied. He has also asked for US assistance in training an Afghan
police force and Afghan military that would be under the control of
the democratically elected government. The US has denied these
requests as well.
Frankly, Afghanistan is on a course for anarchy. Only strong
investment in rebuilding and stabilizing that country will prevent
that. And no one, and especially not the US, seems to be willing to
make that investment.
With this kind a track record, I simply don't trust the US to do the
right thing in Iraq.
mez
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Feb 17 2003 - 13:29:36 MST