Violently entrenched faith-based-war-aid-made-waste ─ Wissing’s Funding the Enemy

Another account of continuing BREAKDOWN aided and abetted by U.S. war
Excerpt from Wissing’s excerpt by Carolyn Bennett

In his introduction to Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban, author, journalist and scholar Douglas Wissing says the book depicts what he experienced and what he learned.

“Trundling around mountainous eastern Afghanistan in the team’s armored vehicles, dodging ambushes and hitting IEDs, I began to hear grotesque tales of corruption and failed development. Soldiers, diplomats, and development officials told me of a vast collusion between American and Afghan officials that resulted in U.S. taxpayers funding the Taliban.  

‘We’re funding both sides of this war,’ one sergeant blithely told me.  

“At first, it seemed preposterous. But as I encountered story after story, I began to realize the soldiers and aid people were telling the truth. There was a toxic system that connected distracted American careerists, private military and development contractors, Afghan kleptocrats, and wily jihadists.  

‘It’s the perfect war,’ one U.S. intelligence officer sardonically told me. ‘Everyone is making money.’ 

“With the United States focused on Iraq, the strategy in Afghanistan shifted repeatedly—almost a strategy du jour as commanders and mission directors rotated in and out on absurdly short tours of duty. As the Afghan insurgency flared, Washington executed the typical bureaucratic response to a problem: throw money at it.  

“But [throwing money at the problem] just made it worse. More money, more corruption, more  insecurity. Attracted to the increased appropriations, the guns and- aid crowd flocked to Afghanistan, engendering the “Kabubble,” wartime Kabul awash with international aid money and the private military and development contractors who fed on it. 

“I discovered that war and development policies that sounded so foolproof from the podiums of Washington played out much differently on the front lines of Afghanistan. I observed the voraciousness of a corrupt Afghan government manipulating an arrogant, ADD [attention deficit disorder] afflicted American bureaucracy.  

“I learned that the linkage between third-world development and U.S. national security that foreign-aid lobbyists peddled to American policymakers was a faith-based doctrine with almost no foundation in research.” 

Sources and notes

Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban by Douglas Wissing

Overview: “With the vague intention of winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan, the U.S. government has mismanaged billions of development dollars, bolstered the drug trade, and dumped untold millions into Taliban hands.”

http://douglaswissing.com/books/funding-the-enemy/overview/

http://douglaswissing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Funding-the-Enemy-Introduction.pdf
http://douglaswissing.com/

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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