Originally posted by DanS
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But, yeah, we could afford that. But the guys joining the Taliban don't just want cash; they want a future and a sense of purpose, and the Taliban are also promising that in a way US government handouts would not; if we could get a functioning economy going, however, we might get somewhere.
The trick is that Afghanistan has never been able to support itself, and has always relied primarily on foreign aid to survive; we're going to have to throw a lot of money at Afghanistan to make it work already (for example, it's military -- it's brightest spot -- isn't even at full capacity yet, and already costs more than the entire gross GDP of the country to maintain). And Afghanistan will take as much money as we can through at it (in the structure of its notoriously weak central government, the president's most important job is to be the ambassador to wealthy nations -- and that's by no means a new development); the trick is to figure out how to offer something other than a handout, and here the Taliban is ahead of us.
On an unrelated note, many of my colleagues are grumbling about the appointment of Gen. Eikenberry as Ambassador to Afghanistan (because he's not a diplomat), but I'm frankly heartened by it; he seems like an extraordinarily competent and realistic leader. Plus, his #2 at the embassy will eb an extremely effective career diplomat who has already served as ambassador to Egypt and to the Philippines (where I served under him). Both their appointments are good news.
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