Less than one-fourth of US aid money to Afghanistan reached its destination

In the book Three Cups of Tea -- a story about a diplomat's quest to build schools in the third world -- Greg Mortenson explains clearly and concisely why the United States is losing the war on terrorism, especially in Afghanistan.  (This is from page 290):

After distributing forty dollars of CAI's (Central Asian Institute's) money to Uzra and twenty dollars to each of her ninety teachers, who hadn't been receiving their salaries either, Mortenson saw Bergman safely onto a United Nations charter flight to Islamabad and began trying to track down Uzra's money.  On his third odyssey through the echoing halls of the crumbling Ministry of Finance, he met Afghanistan's deputy minister of finance, who threw up his hands when Mortenson asked him why Uzra and her teachers weren't receiving their pay.

"He told me that less than a quarter of the aid money President Bush had promised his country had actually arrived in Afghanistan.  And of those insufficient funds, he said that $680 million had been 'redirected,' to build runways and bulk up supply depots in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar for the invasion of Iraq everyone expected would soon begin."

On the Ariana 727 to Dubai, the British Air 777 to London, and the Delta 767 to D.C., Mortenson felt like a heat-seeking missile speeding toward his own government, fueled by outrage.  "The time for us to turn all the suffering we'd helped to cause in Afghanistan into something positive was slipping away.  I was so upset I paced the aisles of the planes all the way to Washington," Mortenson says.  "If we couldn't do something as simple as seeing that a hero like Uzra gets her forty-dollar a-month salary, then how could we ever hope to do the hard work it takes to win the war on terror?"

It should not surprise people that an Administration that despises government programs has trouble understanding some of the concepts behind nation-building.

The problem is also their inability to recognize cause and effect.  If you can't pay the teachers, children can't go to school and get educated.  If Children are not going to school and being educated, then:

• Afghanistan has a better chance of staying economically depressed in the long-run.
• The kids are more likely to turn to destructive hobbies, like being preyed on by Islamic radicals.
• Less citizens in that country will feel like they personally have a lot to gain if the rebuilding process is a success.

This should be common sense, especially after all the money US taxpayers have unknowingly invested in this operation.

Comments

[granny]

Fits very neatly with: President Bush "claiming that health care should be a luxury and not a right", don't you think?