Afghanistan money pit

The Associated Press reported, "The United States wasted billions of dollars in war-torn Afghanistan on buildings and vehicles that were either abandoned or destroyed, according to a report released Monday by a U.S. government watchdog."

The story said, "The agency said it reviewed $7.8 billion spent since 2008 on buildings and vehicles. Only $343.2 million worth of buildings and vehicles 'were maintained in good condition,' said the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, which oversees American taxpayer money spent on the protracted conflict.

"The report said that just $1.2 billion of the $7.8 billion went to pay for buildings and vehicles that were used as intended."

Afghanistan is no longer a war.

It is a money pit, and has been for some time.

Our reason for being there ended nearly a decade ago when Navy SEALs found and killed Osama bin Laden.

He was in Pakistan.

But war costs a lot of money and there are plenty of people who profit off it. Just as we should have quit NATO in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, so we should have left Afghanistan with Laden's death.

Yet we still are in NATO and Afghanistan. The two overlap as somehow NATO's European mission was extended to the middle of Asia.

Sarah Chayes is senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

7 years ago, she wrote about corruption in Afghanistan for Politico.

She wrote, "Human rights abuses, classically defined, are gory: nighttime disappearances, a corpse lodged in the weeds by the side of a canal, scars from electrical burns blotching bruised skin or bodies swinging above city streets from the crossbeams of cranes. The horror of such crimes is easy to decry. But what about government crime that may be less gruesome though possibly even more consequential? Acute, systemic corruption is such an offense. And that is exactly what the United States, in the name of democracy, has enabled over the past 13 years in Afghanistan.

"To the east of the Afghan city of Kandahar, where I lived for most of the past decade, is a long bridge over the Tarnak River. A decomposing carcass of dangerously exposed sinews, shattered by war and neglect, that bridge was an obvious reconstruction project for the Afghan government to take on. But within weeks of each repair, new holes would spring open; drivers had to pick their way around them, or abandon the bridge altogether and hazard the rocky riverbed below. Then repairs would begin anew. Meanwhile, the contractors on the job, linked to the provincial governor, flaunted sudden wealth."

On May 20, 2015, Megan McCloskey and Vince Dixon of ProPublica reported, "This is a story about how the U.S. military built a lavish headquarters in Afghanistan that wasn’t needed, wasn’t wanted and wasn’t ever used—at a cost to American taxpayers of at least $25 million.

"From start to finish, this 64,000-square-foot mistake could easily have been avoided. Not one, not two, but three generals tried to kill it. And they were overruled, not because they were wrong, but seemingly because no one wanted to cancel a project Congress had already given them money to build."

And so it goes.

People propose expensive projects in Afghanistan and everyone in Congress is too scared to say no. Why, someone may question the loyalty of a congressman if he did the math.

As always, American foreign aid always helps the local corrupt politicians. It also helps corrupt politicians in America. Foreign policy has been very, very profitable to Hillary, Kerry, and of course, Hunter Biden.

All I know about Afghanistan is that nearly 2,400 American soldiers died there. It is time to come home.

The Associated Press story said, "The U.S. public is weary of the nearly 20-year-old war and President Joe Biden is reviewing a peace deal his predecessor, Donald Trump, signed with the Taliban a year ago. He must decide whether to withdraw all troops by May 1, as promised in the deal, or stay and possibly prolong the war. Officials say no decision has been made but on Monday, Washington’s peace envoy and the American who brokered the U.S.-Taliban deal, Zalmay Khalilzad, was back in the Afghan capital for a tour of the region."

Biden should keep the deal.

Let the Taliban have the damned place.

After landing on the moon, Americans decided, OK. We had enough fun in outer space. Let's address the problems here on Earth.

I say, OK, we had enough fun on the other side of the planet. Let's address the problems here in Poca -- and the rest of the USA.