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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (74408)	2/15/2003 11:17:39 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

All the talk about "nation-building" was, it's clear now, just PR, at least as far as Afghanistan is concerned. Once the "regime-change" is done, we're outta there, on to the next one down the AxisOfEvil list. Bush was never much of a fan of "nation-buidling", as he made clear while campaigning for President. Maybe they mean to do things differently in Iraq. Jacob, are you sure you aren't confusing the Bush administration's short attention span with the media's short attention span? We still have troops in Afghanistan, and I read somewhere (can't find it now) that we have pledged about $800 million towards rebuilding Afghanistan this year, which ain't peanuts. I know the President just announced a $5 million grant towards rebuilding a hospital in Kabul. It may not be enough, but between the NGO's squeaky-wheeling and the media's fixation on other subjects, I'm not sure where the truth lies here. Of course Afghanistan could use any amount of aid; the place was reduced to rubble over the last twenty years.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (74408)	2/16/2003 2:21:51 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<no line in the budget for aid to Afghanistan> All the talk about "nation-building" was, it's clear now, just PR, at least as far as Afghanistan is concerned. Once the "regime-change" is done, we're outta there, on to the next one down the AxisOfEvil list. Not true at all. Straight from the mouth of the Deputy National Security Advisor: cfr.org With the help of the international community, a humanitarian crisis has been averted. The actions of the Taliban had cut off relief supplies to large parts of the country, exacerbating the threat of famine for millions of people as winter approached in 2001. The defeat of the Taliban by the United States and coalition forces opened the way to large-scale relief operations. As its part, the United States devoted $200 million worth of emergency food assistance to Afghanistan in fiscal 2002. The United States has helped vaccinate 4.3 million children against measles, treat 700,000 cases of malaria, and provide basic health services for more than two million people since last summer. This is just part of an improving picture in the country. More than two million Afghan refugees have returned home since the Taliban's fall -- demonstrating their confidence in Afghanistan's future. At the Tokyo Conference over a year ago, the international community pledged $4.5 billion to help rebuild Afghanistan. For its part, the United States pledged nearly $300 million -- and has delivered nearly twice that amount. Since October 2001, the United States has provided over $840 million towards Afghanistan's humanitarian aid and reconstruction. Reconstruction and security are mutually reinforcing -- progress in both areas is crucial to rebuilding Afghanistan. The United States is leading the effort to build an Afghan national army that will provide the foundation for Afghanistan's security. In addition to the $84 million already disbursed and another $150 million authorized for training and equipping the Afghan national army, the United States is providing another $60 million in support for police training and counter-narcotics. And we must remember perhaps our greatest contribution to security -- over $17 billion spent to date liberating Afghanistan from Taliban and al-Qaida forces and combating their remnants. On infrastructure, the United States is contributing $80 million to a $160 million effort by the United States, Japan, and Saudi Arabia to rebuild the ring road linking Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat. This will promote trade and commerce and help unify the country. The United States is also helping with other infrastructure projects, including efforts to rebuild more than six thousand wells, springs, and irrigation canals, and to restore the water supply to Kabul, Kandahar, and Kunduz. The United States is also strongly committed to helping Afghanistan provide an education to all its children -- boys and girls alike. The United States has printed and distributed more than 15 million textbooks in Dari and Pashto. And it is training thousands of teachers -- male and female -- and refurbishing hundreds of schools throughout the country. Of course, Afghanistan is also wrestling with fundamental issues of political reconstruction. Through two decades of conflict, Afghans have seen the tragic consequences of communism, factionalism, and extremism. Today, they seek the same freedom for which people the world over have hoped and fought. The United States is helping Afghans to write a new constitution, establish a new human rights commission, and organize new elections -- even as we recognize that political reform must ultimately be the work of the Afghans themselves.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (74408)	2/23/2003 4:22:56 AM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 281500

Once the "regime-change" is done, we're outta there, on to the next one down the AxisOfEvil list. Bush was never much of a fan of "nation-buidling", as he made clear while campaigning for President. Maybe they mean to do things differently in Iraq. I wouldn’t expect much difference in Iraq. Part of the problem is the extremely short-sighted and unsophisticated worldview that prevails among many in the US, particularly those with little or no experience of the less developed world. Here we find the assumption that the regime is the problem, and that removing the regime will solve the problem. Unfortunately, in the real world regimes are symptoms, not problems, and the sad reality is that when regimes are removed most of these countries will revert to the conditions that prevailed before the offending regime took power. These conditions tend to be the same ones that allowed the rise of the regimes we don’t like. If we continue the attitude we are taking in Afghanistan, we may easily find ourselves facing new threats from that source. The same could happen in Iraq. The deficit is only partly due to tax-cutting, which has barely begun to kick in. True. As the tax cuts kick in, the deficit will widen even more, unless fiscal discipline is restored. We need to remember that we are a military power because of our economic strength, not the other way around. Instead, it's because all fiscal discipline ended on 9/11/01. There is bi-partisan support for throwing billions at any and every problem that arises. One more sign that both parties stand for big government and big spending, and always have, when you get beyond the rhetoric. In the military, there is a large increase in spending for new needs. Meanwhile, all the "old needs", the Cold War weapons and forces, continue to get funding as well. As an example, why do we need any submarines? Or battleships? This is a point I’ve been bringing up for years, but nobody seems willing to talk about it. The fastest way to return sanity to the defense budget while still adjusting our forces to meet current challenges is to acknowledge that much of our cold-war gear is simply not needed. For example, we could easily retire a third or more of the oldest weapons in all three legs of the nuclear tripod without reducing the credibility of our nuclear deterrent. The DOE spends billions to maintain thousands of completely unnecessary nuclear warheads. We need to realize that the absolute number of warheads is irrelevant to the utility of a nuclear deterrent force. The significant factors are the accuracy, reliability, and survivability of the delivery systems, not how many warheads you can deliver. This has been true for decades, but we still treat warhead counts as if they mean something. The defense budget cannot be treated as a sacred cow, not without major cost to the taxpayers and to the economy. If anyone gets hurt, if any interest group is even threatened with a loss of comfort, they can spend a few millions on lobbying, and their investment will be returned a hundred-fold or more, at public expense. Airlines, pension/healthcare benefits for retired workers of now-bankrupt steel companies, price-supports for farmers, etc. The losers here are not only the taxpayers. Protection for non-competitive industries, particularly agriculture, prevents the rational flow of billions of dollars to poor countries that desperately need them. The money the developed world spends to prevent their people from buying agricultural goods from developing nations, many of which have no other source of foreign exchange, far exceeds what is spent on aid to the developing world. The result is more poverty, more hopelessness, more anger, more instability, more need for military force to control disorder. The list is literally endless. The plan is to wage war without pain. No body-bags, no belt-tightening. This plan is not consistent with the nature of war.