Iraq beware of Bush promises. For God's sake don't read his lips.
The last place we liberated
The White House calls Afghanistan a success story. But the failure to commit needed resources has left it a chaotic, increasingly dangerous country where violent warlords run amok. Are we going to repeat our mistake in Iraq?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Jake Tapper
April 10, 2003 | President George W. Bush signed the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act into law last Dec. 4, authorizing $3.3 billion in economic, political, humanitarian and security assistance for Afghanistan over the next four years. The next month, Bush submitted the 2003 budget authorization to Congress but requested slightly less than that.
As in: $0.00.
"The administration anticipated that Congress would put it in," explains a sympathetic congressional source. "So they low-balled it."
That's for sure. Congressional staffers quickly penciled in $295 million, but that still wasn't enough. "The request in the administration's appropriations bill does not come near fully funding the bill that we passed in [the Senate Foreign Relations] Committee and the president signed into law," the bill's chief author, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., tells Salon. "It does not come near it."
As we consider reconstruction plans in Iraq, and the administration promises to democratize the country, it's worth taking a look at our "liberation" of Afghanistan. A year later, many of the atrocities we thought we'd stopped still continue, and even Bush's allies in the Senate and Afghanistan think we have undercommitted to efforts that could truly change that country for the better.
salon.com |
