Now that the U.S. military has left Iraq, it’s time to tally how much the nation wasted putting it back together. Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, bluntly calls it a “disorganized American …
Development
Why Is the U.S. So Good at Nation-Breaking And So Poor at Nation-Building?
As the colors are cased in Baghdad on Thursday, and U.S. military says its goodbyes, Iraq remains a nation with large, gaping wounds nearly a decade after the U.S. invaded. While the U.S. military remains the world’s best at …
“Is All the Money The U.S. Is Pouring Into Afghanistan Doing More Harm Than Good?”
Some 90% of the money in and around Afghanistan is coming from the United States and its allies. Yet this tidal wave of cash is distorting the Afghan economy, breeding corruption, and creating a dependency that may be tough to break. Stephen Biddle, an Afghanistan expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Brian Katulis, a …
Smarter National-Security Spending: What a Concept
The nation’s approach to national security is warped by the way the different pieces of it — military, diplomatic, economic, development — are funded. Washington is a series of funnels and tubes — congressional committees, Pentagon rice bowls (a way of saying I’m keeping what’s mine!), and institutional inertia. It keeps the money …
The Army’s Reading List: A Look Into the New Joint Chiefs Chairman
This week, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey published his new professional reading list. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like a big story, but it does offer a look into the thinking of the general who will be leading our armed forces in the coming years. Every service has their respective professional development programs, …
$56 Billion to Rebuild Afghanistan (So Far): The Whole Kit & Kabul-Dole
Remember how you doled out allowances to your kids, trying to teach them the value of a quarter before moving on to a dollar? (OK — I was cheap.) Check out this chart from a Thursday report from the Government Accountability Office: direct payments to Afghanistan from Washington more than tripled between 2009 and 2010 with …
Pakistanis, Indians, and the U.S. Taxpayer
Pakistan, you may have heard, is finding it challenging to battle the friendly (to them) Taliban forces on its soil that only cross into Afghanistan to kill U.S. troops (the Pakistanis have no compunction about killing the other Taliban — those trying to topple the government in Islamabad). So it was interesting to see the …
What the Iraqi People Think of Our War Against Their Nation
We always think of “collateral damage” as harm done to individuals by a wayward bomb. But sometimes collateral damage applies to an entire nation. That’s the sense you get from Mark Kukis’ new book, Voices from Iraq, a People’s History, 2003-2009. He delves into the shards of war to see how those most affected — after all, we …
Joint Strike Fighter’s $100 Billion 30-Year Engine Contract Up For Grabs
The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program is “the largest defense acquisition program in U.S. history” and it’s engine “represents over 10% of the overall program price, or about $100 billion,” according to the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Representative Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA).
For the past five years, all four …
Illuminating Kabul
U.S. cities like San Diego are debating the wisdom of putting solar-powered street lights along their roads. Heck — that’s already happening in…Kabul, Afghanistan? You bet. In fact, Colonel Thomas Magness IV, the commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Afghanistan, was raving about them Thursday:
There is no reliable
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