The War “It’s basically a criminal enterprise.”
posted by on October 22 at 16:15 PM
If you’d like to know what’s going on in Afghanistan, all you need is 22 minutes and to click here, to a Bill Moyers interview with Sarah Chayes from February.
If you want to know in more detail, read Chayes’s book The Punishment of Virtue. It details her attempts, among other things, to get the local warlord in the southern center of Kandahar fired—instead he was promoted by Karzai. (If you’re pressed for time with this book, you can skim some of the historical sections without missing much.) Given the news lately, this ought to be a popular Christmas gift.
Choice bits from the interview?:
The U.S.-backed Karzai government is “basically a criminal enterprise.”
Pakistan, which receives $1 billion a year from the U.S., is a Taliban factory: “It’s actually U.S. taxpayer money paying the insurgency.”
That’s only the beginning. Really. Just 22 minutes.
people who profit from war fund both sides. it's been going on for the entirety of our precious American existence. if you find this surprising, YOU HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION.
also, where do you think the Bush dynasty got it's fortune? If you think it came from oil, again, YOU HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION.
It's strange that Afghanistan might have been a brighter place under Soviet occupation.
I don't really agree (nor does anyone who knows much about it) that Afghanistan is basically a criminal enterprise.
But the part about Pakistan is 100 percent correct.
You're an idiot, Will.
i like to think that one day when you all discuss a book, movie, music, or some such other thing, the link you provide will be to a library catalogue. wouldn't that be nice, and so civic minded.
yeah, and al-Qaeda STILL doesn't get more than 90 percent of their funding and volunteers from one country - Saudi Arabia - Fnarf.
riiiiiight.
except ... it does.
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