Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Afghanistan

I do not understand the purpose of the American invasion of Afghanistan. They have trained military forces of more than one hundred thousand and security forces of a similar size. The Afghans were already skilled fighters, so what is the point. Training and equipping Afghans for war is sending an alcoholic to a martini making school.

The Afghanistan economy cannot afford to support military and security forces of this size. Once the foreign aid dries up, these forces will be a deadweight on the economy by taking the best young people out of productive activity and leaving them with nothing to do but cause mischief. Not a recipe for peace and prosperity.

The war has torn apart a family- and tribal-based culture and turned it into a political culture. That is a problem in itself, but worse still, it is a political culture dependent on foreign aid. A political culture can only work if there are coffers full of tax revenue ready to be distributed by political largesse. The Afghan economy is so poor that it cannot support a political culture. The war has destroyed the tribal culture and put nothing its place, except a dependence culture.

2 comments:

Eli Chitaka said...

strategic interests in the area, including the war on drugs. Making sure russia and china are kept at bay is my guess. Though much pre emptive action is based on fear and control. Also the US empire is dealing with a huge military machine, which is hungry for war. I really do wonder if they will be able to wind up things in iraq and afghan without invading another nation.

Gene said...

It was the shelter of a global terrorism infrastructure, now dismantled, the remainder flown to Pakistan. It had as a defacto government the Taliban, I hope you don't need a review of the atrocities of Taliban rule. While they are still strong, they are diminished. It has a huge drugs production industry, opium poppy that is an enslaver of millions. My only disapointemeent is that we helped the enemy against the soviet union. They might have kept them under control. There are few natural resources there. Rare Earths... I hope we can get out, but going in was right. AND, the warriors were badly equipped and badly organized. IF we were successful in training them in modern warfare maybe order can come to the tribalism you seem to embrace.