A bipartisan panel created by Congress in 2008, best known as the Commission on Wartime Contracting, recently reported to D.C that approximately 60 Billion Dollars, only a small amount of Bush’s and an even smaller amount of the Obama’s administration’s record-setting military budget, has been wasted in the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with nearly half of the waste coming in the last 3 years. According to their findings, this waste includes, but is not limited to “corruption” and “lax oversight of contractors”.
In other words, taxpayer dollars are being used to fill the pockets of corrupt military contractors. To be more specific, the panel found that up to 30 percent of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on contracts and grants to support U.S operations in Iraq and Afghanistan goes towards fraud and waste. Since no inspector general monitors contracting and government agencies have long refused to overhaul the way they award and manage contracts in war zones, the waste is likely to grow beyond the panel’s conservative estimate of $207 billion by the end of 2011.
Since the U.S is spending more money on contractor’s salaries, oil digging, corruption and fraud than it is on the long-term maintenance of schools, medical clinics, barracks, roads and power plants already build with American money, the panel expressed its concern that if nothing is done to shift spending, the responsibility will be put on the terribly ineffective and deeply corrupt governments of Iraq and Afghanistan to manage and bear the long-term costs of operating these public services.
So, as we approach the 10 year anniversary of a war that has left more innocent civilians dead than the 9/11 attacks that supposedly inspired it, one cannot help but wonder, why exactly we are still there, fighting a losing battle against the Taliban. Experts like my father, Senior Frontline Director and Correspondent, Martin Smith, who has been to Afghanistan both imbedded with the troops and with the people of Afghanistan dozens of times over the last 20 years, says “the Obama administration’s central objective is to leave behind a safe and stable Afghanistan”. Although a pullout of all combat troops was set during his campaign for president in 2011, the Obama administration determined that this goal could not be met until 2014, meaning that if a Republican is elected president, a pullout date would vanish and we could be in the region for another decade.
What we know is this- our war in Afghanistan is the longest in our history. It is flirting with being the most expensive too. Why we continue to go after the Taliban while Al-Qaeda, perhaps stronger now than under Osama bin Laden, roams free in Pakistan beats me. Our government survived September 11th, 2001, the deadliest day in our history, only to become distracted with foreign enemies who pose little threat to our national security and the national security of our closest allies. Since 9/11, Al-Qaeda has attempted terrorist attacks in New York City 13 times. And those are just the ones New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand knows about. According to the Democratic senator “al-Qaeda’s deep and abiding interest in attacking US rail and transit systems” comes from the remaining members of al-Qaeda and its allied groups “surely looking to avenge bin Laden’s death”.
If you underestimate the “allied groups” Gillibrand is talking about, just look at southeast Africa, where a close ally of al-Qaeda is quarantining a population of millions and letting this group, mostly women and children starve to death under their control.
Letting al-Queda extend it’s interests worldwide while we lose thousands of lives and billions of taxpayer dollars on the War in Afghanistan is despicable to say the least and suspicious to many.
If the Obama administration truly prioritized the safety of America and it’s allies above long term economic interests, than military contracting would not be this expensive. According to BBC findings, “given the increasing importance of finding and exploiting new sources of fossil fuel, governments like those of the US and the UK are enormously keen to gain influence in the Central Asian region in order to secure those supplies for the WestIn order to achieve that, and get those energy supplies moving out of Central Asia, they need to set up a pro-western government in Afghanistan.” So, if this is truly a war for oil, the more important question becomes- can we trust our president?
Thus far, Obama’s policies of tax cuts for the rich, bailouts for the corporations, cuts to education and entitlement programs and record levels of pork-barrel spending mirror, in large part, those of his predecessor. If his interests in Afghanistan are also like that of his predecessors interest in Iraq, we have another situation were taxpayer money and American lives are being wasted away on a situation that has little, even nothing to do with the safety of the American public.
Like many, I have reached a point beyond frustration with the Obama administration. Sending them a letter telling them to end this war so reporters like my father don’t have to risk their lives informing an increasingly disinterested public on the horrors of warfare, is beyond useless. They have their interests. Unfortunately, so does the American public. Professionals expect youth turnout, largely a liberal constituency, will be historically low in 2012. Why vote if both sides are corrupt and in bed with the wealthy. Well, the GOP is having sex with the wealthy while the Dems are just taking them out to dinner. So, I say, vote for the lesser of two evils, like they do in third world nations. My biggest concern is, with a rapidly increasing total of Americans giving up looking for work, a shrinking middle class, more and more people unable to afford college, a growing debt and a continuation of our status as the only developed nation on earth with no national curriculum in education and no universal health care system, I wonder how much longer we can get away with not calling ourselves a third world nation.
Still, as meaningless as it is to say this, I will- The least we can do is end this war, Mr. President.
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