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| Government Corruption |
| The staggering toll US failure in Afghanistan had on taxpayers is laid bare by government auditor |
| 2025-01-03 |
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news]
U.S. failure in Afghanistan was driven by a system that rewarded generals, diplomats, contractors, and policymakers who reported successes on the ground rather than the grim reality of a bloody insurgency, according to the watchdog who spent 12 years observing the war unravel. The result, said one U.S. military adviser, was that the system 'became a self-licking ice cream cone' as more money was committed to justify the billions already spent. John Sopko, the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, will deliver his final report later this year. It will reveal that experts and government officials now believe that decisions made as far back as 2002 meant the war was doomed to fail. And it will highlight how American ignorance of Afghan culture, the impact of local corruption, plus weak cooperation between U.S. agencies all contributed to a war effort that left the country back in Taliban hands at a cost of more than 2,400 American lives and $2 trillion. Yet, writes Sopko in a New York Times opinion piece published Thursday, you wouldn't know it from the optimistic reports coming from the officers and officials in charge at the time. 'But a perverse incentive drove our system,' he writes. 'To win promotions and bigger salaries, military and civilian leaders felt they had to sell their tours of duty, deployments, programs and projects as successes — even when they were not. 'Leaders tended to report and highlight favorable information while obscuring that which pointed to failure. After all, failures do not lead to an ambassadorship or an elevation to general.' The U.S. war in Afghanistan ended with humiliation in August 2021. Taliban fighters had made rapid advances ever since President Joe Biden announced he was bringing home American troops in April of that year, and they quickly swept into the capital Kabul dashing Washington's hopes that the Afghan government could survive without foreign forces. Thousands of Afghans and foreign civilians flocked to the capital's airport seeking safe passage as U.S. diplomats hurriedly abandoned their embassy. Tragedy struck when a suicide bomber killed 13 American personnel amid the chaos at the airport. The confused exit cast a black cloud over Biden's first year in office, undermining his reputation as a foreign policy expert and a safe pair of hands after Donald Trump's first term. Those final weeks showed the futility of U.S. claims that things were moving in the right direction, says Sopko. 'The sudden collapse of the Afghan government and rise of the Taliban showed that the United States could not buy favorable Afghan perceptions of the country’s corrupt leaders and government, or of America's intentions,' he writes. 'Yet over two decades — and even as Afghan provinces fell like dominoes in the summer of 2021 — I do not recall any senior official telling Congress or the American people that failure was a real possibility.' Instead, he pointed to occasions when official spokesmen offered misleading information. He cited the Pentagon official who said just before the collapse that the Kabul government had more than 300,000 soldiers and police officers, despite evidence of thousands of 'ghost' personnel who existed only on paper so that bosses could collect extra salaries. 'Important information for measuring the success of initiatives was — at times deliberately — hidden from Congress and the American public, including USAID-funded assessments that concluded Afghan ministries were incapable of managing direct U.S. financial assistance,' he writes. 'Despite vigorous efforts by the U.S. bureaucracy to stop us, my office made such material public.' He describes how one general said his biggest problem was how to spend the remaining $1 billion from his annual budget in a little over a month, amid a culture that measured spending as the best metric of success. 'Another official we spoke to said he refused to cancel a multimillion-dollar building project that field commanders did not want, because the funding had to be spent,' writes Sopko. 'The building was never used.' Meanwhile, the spending continues. Sopko said much was routed that United Nations agencies that lacked transparency and proper oversight. And last year, his office reported that since the withdrawal, U.S.-funded partners paid at least $10.9 million in taxes and fees to Taliban authorities. Related: John Sopko 11/16/2024 US spends over $14 billion on Afghan evacuation and resettlement: SIGAR John Sopko 02/25/2024 Resurgent al-Qaida training camps latest black eye from Biden Afghanistan withdrawal John Sopko 05/27/2023 US Has Suspended Assistance Operations in Ghor: Miller |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #7 "What if nobody went... over thar?" "Inefficient to travel so far When," lament our elite, "Those we want to defeat Are right here." "Public transit to war!" [extra incense for GMC] |
| Posted by: Pancho Poodle8452 2025-01-03 22:50 |
| #6 "became a self-licking ice cream cone".... The more accurate term in self-sucking d*&k. |
| Posted by: Bangkok Billy 2025-01-03 19:10 |
| #5 The whole HR of the military is counter productive. It operated in a peacetime mode substituting peacetime practices in lieu of actual warfare in the selection and promotion process. We've been at war pretty much since 9/11 and there was no adjustment in the process. War is not fair or equitable, neither should the promotion and selection process to wage it. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2025-01-03 16:21 |
| #4 ^ What about the ones who work from home? |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2025-01-03 12:39 |
#3 The real process of the USA's role in the Afghan debacle amounts to Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization. |
| Posted by: Elmaper+McGurque1612 2025-01-03 12:23 |
| #2 Here’s an idea. Let’s not fund the Taliban anymore. No more weekly cash deliveries. Let’s start there. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2025-01-03 07:30 |
| #1 So the real winners were the Military Industrial Complex and the pro-war Politicians and/or their families on their payrolls. |
| Posted by: NN2N1 2025-01-03 05:34 |