The military claims to attempt to cut costs by outsourcing certain services to contractors. These contractors in turn, sub-contract these services - often hiring local groups and paying them a small fraction of the contract amount, and then simply pocketing the remainder as profit. This makes me strongly question why the military bothers at all with these middle men - why not simply hire Afghans to help re-build Afghanistan? This was something that was touched upon in the film we watched in class "Re-thinking Afghanistan" but I think there's a lot to be said about this issue. It seems that we - America - are perfectly content with being taken advantage of allowing war profiteers to get rich off the blood and sweat of other Americans. We really must re-think how the spending for the war is managed.
It's understandable (though not necessarily forgivable) that the military would spend money carelessly - after all it really isn't there money. Congress is just as much a guilty party here as any for not putting restrictions on the spending power of our war machine, but rather than focusing on whose incompetence is greater, I'd like to just tie this issue in with something I've brought up before - economic growth in Afghanistan. I firmly believe that the rise of terrorism, militantism and islamism is directly related to the desperate economic conditions in the region. It's understandable why people would be angry with America, and even hate America, but being willing to take up arms and die fighting America is an entirely different thing. Che Guevara's revolution failed because he could not motivate enough of the lower class to fight - and the reason being was they had too much to lose. They may have been poor, but they had food and land and homes - guerrilla warfare stems from desperation.
This is not the case in Afghanistan - there is plenty of desperation to go around and that means plenty of young men willing to risk their lives fighting the Americans for what meager pay the Taliban would offer them, or simply because they feel they must do something to change their situation. There are more factors involved here than poverty however - fundamental ideological differences between the Islamic world and the West make Western occupation of Afghanistan a very difficult pill to swallow, and the sense of wanting revenge for past and present crimes against the people of Afghanistan, however, I feel the ultimate motivating factor is economic. Give people jobs, a chance to support their families and a sense that their lives have some worth, and I think one would find it is much more difficult to convince people to take up arms and run off the mountains.
And with all the money and resources being wasted on contractors and U.S. troops in Afghanistan, we could be helping to provide jobs for the Afghans, by hiring Afghans to construct wells, build roads, and provide security. The added benefit is it would be orders of magnitude cheaper to pay an Afghan - who would be happy to work for a tenth of what an American would - to do the same job as an American, and at the same time you have just eliminated one enemy combatant with zero loss of life. It is a win-win situation. Of course, there is still a need for some American presence to oversee reconstruction, manage funds and recruitment, provide training and supplies, and all the other administrative duties - but that would be far less costly than managing a full war. It just doesn't make any sense to continue spending billions on fighting and killing people, when we could probably solve our problems in Afghanistan for a fraction of the cost, and of greatly reduced loss of life to both Americans and Afghans - and secure a stable future for the country which has been left in ruins following thirty years of warfare.
I sometimes wonder if as an institution the military purposely perpetuates warfare so as to ensure it's own survival. That's probably not true, but it sure feels like that sometimes. I think what we really ought to do is fire most of our military commanders, and instead bring in some economists to manage Afghanistan. It's clear the Afghan people are not pushovers, we can not bully them into submission, which means we are forced to work with the Afghan people - not impose upon them a solution which is convenient for us. I could be wrong, but this is the type of solution that seems to be needed - not drone attacks or special operation forces. I just hope that the damage isn't so great that Afghanistan isn't doomed to forever be a failed nation...
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