The last 20 years in Afghanistan was just a big grift on the American tax payer

[USAFRetired_Liberal]

Military getting fancy things, military contractors making tons of money, the Afghan government taking money, etc…

[BeckyDem]

1. Undeniable.

Never needed to happen.

[bluewater]

2. War is a racket.

[Sherman A1]

3. Yup

It was precisely that.

[cbabe]

4. yes.

[2naSalit]

5. And set up...

A mercenary network via erik prince.

[Polly Hennessey]

6. Isn't that what war is all about.

[harumph]

7. I was just in another thread and nobody seems to get that

Lots of talk about why why why are the Afghan military so ineffectual. Lots of talk
about how unfair it is to the women and girls left behind. But very little acknowledgement that
this situation is inevitable because failure was baked in the cake. For example, for years now
up to the present, the Afghan police and military have not been paid reliably - sometimes
going months without pay.

Here is 2018 Nytimes articles describing the problem.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/world/asia/afghan-police-pay.html

Every other question about this "failure" should first have to contend with the problem that
the security forces we helped train WERE NOT RELIABLY PAID. Would you risk having your throat slit by the
Taliban for free!!! The foregoing article states that some police went months without pay. Months. These people
are already poor as dirt and we were expecting them to fight for their country. Afghanistan isn't a country. It's a
bunch of warlords and their militias (and they do pay). So the next question is why weren't the police and military paid?
A follow-up would be where are my fucking tax dollars?

[LuckyLib]

28. In bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Just like the pallets of dollars

that were offloaded in Iraq. Our tax dollars at work.

[TomWilm]

43. Not US tax dollars though. The money was Iraq's own!

That pallet of money was basically impounded funds: Iraqi assets dating back to the original Gulf War, oil money that had been under the control of the United Nations. So the US was giving Iraq back its money in the most irresponsible way possible - a crime in itself.

[LuckyLib]

45. That's right. I forgot about that. I wonder where that money ended up.

[wackadoo wabbit]

46. This is very interesting and explains a lot. Thanks for posting it! /nt

[The Wizard]

8. Truth is the first

casualty of war. Follow the money.

[Devil Child]

9. Nailed it USAFRetired_Liberal

So many participants in this 20 year graft.

I'd politely add a bunch of Officers having a "combat deployment" to get their career tickets punched while climbing the ladder.

[Chainfire]

10. It is a transfer of wealth from people who pay taxes to people who don't.

I paid for more of it than Donald Trump did.

[czarjak]

11. Easy-Peasy. They don't even break a sweat.

[Kid Berwyn]

12. "Money trumps peace." -- George W Bush, Feb. 14, 2007

Know your BFEE: WikiLeaks Stratfor Dump Exposes Continued Secret Government Warmongering

[cayugafalls]

18. Octafish, a great DU'er if there ever was one.

While I am technically new to DU in terms of actual user name, I have been reading DU since 2006.

I still have an entire BFEE collection from that time...

[littlemissmartypants]

20. Definitely. What happened to Octafish?

[cayugafalls]

40. I do not know. It seems like he/she just disappeared.

Maybe, I missed his farewell post, I'll have to do some digging now, lol

[littlemissmartypants]

41. There are a few in that disappeared category that I miss.

Remember retrowire? I wonder how he's doing.

[cayugafalls]

42. Did some digging.

Seems Octa went over to jpr for a while, then disappeared.

2018-19 or so was the last anyone heard from him.

Seems like jpr swallowed a few people, getting stuck in a pigsty is an unfortunate thing, it seems there is no reconciliation once that mucky line was crossed.

Oh, well, I still enjoyed some of his musings and some of it actually made some sense, not all, but some...either way it was always a good read.

[MarcA]

19. GWB a prime instigator in the whole Afghan mess.

At a press conference in March 2002, he said he wasn't concerned about
Bin Laden. At debate with Kerry in 2004, lied about what he had said. Then
in 2006, told Fred Barnes that he really wasn't concerned.

[CrispyQ]

13. And an opportunity to militarize our police departments.

[Comfortably_Numb]

14. Cheney 's Halliburton cleaned up like bandits.. remember the death showers?

Not grounded and soldiers got shocked taking ‘em. Oh yeah, * uck dick Cheney.

[Hekate]

15. Eric Prince and Blackwater did quite well. Local cops got military hardware galore...

We need to remember.

[Mr.Bill]

30. Our small rural county Sheriff's Department

has an armored personnel carrier. To be more politically correct, they painted the word "Rescue" on the side of it. You know, because armored personnel carriers were designed to rescue people. In the years they have owned it it has only been used in parades. One sheriff hung campaign signs on it until he was told that was illegal.

[Hekate]

31. Sure does set the tone, doesn't it? Goodbye to Mayberry. nt

[Mr.Bill]

32. And trust me, my small town is far closer to Mayberry

than it is to Los Angeles.

[Hekate]

33. Understood. The Sheriff in my old County got hisself a fancy helicopter & a huge mobile incident RV

Gods know what else he squirreled away in case we ever get invaded.

[Hekate]

34. For further reminiscences along this line, visit me over here

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215741648

[XanaDUer2]

16. While many Americans do without nt

[cayugafalls]

17. General Smedley Butler....All war is about money and power.

War is a Racket

[littlemissmartypants]

21. War is definitely a racket.

[twodogsbarking]

22. People don't want to hear this.

Keep saying it.

[Pepsidog]

23. Lots of Afghan warlords sitting on piles of USA cash in caves.

[modrepub]

24. The Military and Their Supporters

told the politicians and media folks what they wanted to hear.

[nvme]

25. ABSOLUTELY NOT

The last 17 years has been about no president wanting to have the Saigon moment when the The Taliban resumes control.
The war was lost after we invaded Iraq. Since then the president knew that Afghanistan would not survive without being propped up by someone. The Military Industrial complex only profited from the previous presidents' lack of willingness to finally pull out of an unwinnable occupation. The grift was a side issue. The soldiers needed to have their equipment.
Our leaders needed to demonstrated courage to draw down, from Bush to Biden no one wants to lose the political capital of ending another forever war.

[USAFRetired_Liberal]

26. No argument from me

I agree

[mahina]

27. Word

My Dad’s letter recounting his experiences in the Special Forces with the Montengnards in Vietnam

[ancianita]

29. Feels that way. And it feels so huge it seems beyond politics. Just ran across this DoD broker

Last edited Sun Aug 15, 2021, 04:31 PM - Edit history (1)

sells our arms through "global partnerships."
If this DoD agency is a non-profit, it's hard to believe that its sales keep the peace; instead they feed into, and result from, international hostilities.

Might as well throw this in as part of the grift, and yes, I'm only guessing about whether U.S. military arms sales increases are connected to our 20 years there. It also feels like the military industrial complex's jobs/money churning all these years, has been as much a cost to taxpayers as a grift.

And then there's media, who only 'high mention' our arms sales across administrations. Seldom do they raise questions about our arming the world. Sure, on some level we know we're international arms dealers, flooded with guns ourselves. Does Congress raise questions about US arms sales, or exert any military budget stipulations over these kinds of U.S. military arms sales?

Do these guys connect with the State Dept end of arms sales? Is there some shadow foreign policy that we'll militarily influence international politics after we've profited from flooding the world with military arms.

It's been fairly easy to pull this grift on people busy trying to make a living while being distracted by domestic issues like saving democracy. Leaders' minimal transparency has kept most Americans ignorant, and then the world will blame Americans for letting them. Death dealing in arms is the key to destabilizing nations, and our own arms dealing history won't end well for us.

The outlook of the military industrial complex has been 'it's been just business, nothing personal.'

[Thunderbeast]

35. Not to mention the black market in opium.

A whole lot of poppys were cultivated as part of the payoff to the "friendly" warlords. Part of the heavy price paid was dead heroin addicts in our own country.

[Pas-de-Calais]

36. War, huh, yeah What is it good for? Nothing!

[Roy Rolling]

37. The packaging

Taxpayers paid trillion$ to make weapons peddlers and corrupt governments rich, as long as the package label said “contains real heroes inside”.

And then, recruit millions of “heroes”, including the ones they later expel for immigration violations.

Fuck the industrial military complex. When an economy is based on killing others the karma comes back on the nation doing the killing. I’m tired of paying for these greedy assholes’ sins.

[StClone]

38. Unending war War, unending profit.

[IronLionZion]

39. Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex

they make tons of money from war.

[Irish_Dem]

44. Add the Taliban to the list. They probably stole pallets of US cash like the rest of them.