New and Improved Government in a Box™
The Captain is doesn’t think much of the New and Improved Government in a Box™.
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.
Unsolicited advice
I haven’t been able to follow the news much the past few weeks, but I did hear about the leak of classified reports stating the war in Afghanistan is going much worse than the Obama administration has publicly suggested. My first thought was “duh!” My second thought was that the administration might want to remember that “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” Just saying.
On the road again
I haven’t been able to post for a few days as I have been more or less traveling non-stop since Saturday (and will continue to do so until Friday): London-Venice (where I am now)-Johannesburg (tomorrow) – Durban (Wednesday) – Lusaka (Friday). Sorry to outsource, but Free Range International has another great post on why a more aggressive rules of engagement would have a greater chance of success in Afghanistan than pop-centric coin.
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