Don’t blame USAID

Joshua Foust at Registan argues that USAID projects are undermining the war in Afghanistan and that the Department of Defense ought to take control of development projects. I think Faust is missing the point a bit. USAID is in Afghanistan because the DOD largely wants it there. I suspect that if DOD were to take over all of USAID’s projects in Afghanistan, the same types of problems would occur. After all, it was not USAID, but DOD that argued spending $200 million per month to provide electricity to Kandahar was a good idea.