I read Greg Sheridan’s articles in The Australian with real respect. He writes on defence matters with intelligence and a deep grasp of the complexities of the issues we face.
Foreign wars are not being fought here locally but they have a profound effect locally. Only this week I listened to a friend talk with deep grief from the heart about her son who is a sailor in Afghanistan with the Australian forces. She is not by any means alone.
Greg writes that in spite of the US spending an amount of money that is effectively driving it into economic decline as a nation all that is being achieved is that the response from the countries where the money is being spent to help is hate.
The US has provided Pakistan with US$20 billion in AID in the past 9 years and it is one of the largest US aid recipients worldwide. Yet there is Pakistani complicity with the Taliban.
Pakistani complicity with the Taliban is of more than academic interest. Australia is affected. We run a military training program with Pakistan.
Greg asks: How is it that no-one in Australian politics is bothered at using Australian taxpayers’ money indeed using Australian troops to fund an institution which helps the forces which are killing Australian soldiers? Our leaders of neither party are showing a grasp of these issues.
The US spends $110 billion per year on military efforts in Afghanistan and spent US$19 billion on counter-narcotics measures in the last 8 years.
Australia is seeing the US bleed away its treasure and military resources in Afghanistan for no discernable chance of success in building a stable functioning democratic Afghanistan friendly to Western interests.
Most of the aid is delivered through contractors and the contractors pay much of the money to the Taliban so they won’t attack the contractors. The Afghan government is rendered more impotent and pathetic by Western aid.
97% of the Afghan economy comes from the international military presence and aid.
Everyone including the Taliban knows the US are leaving in 2014.
Syed Saleem Shahzad in his new book “Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban” reckons the Afghan war has been a famous success for al-Qa’ida. Certainly they see it that way. A lot of their leaders have been killed but many of their larger strategic aims have been achieved. Al-Qa’ida wanted to ‘turn the region into a theatre of war and trap the US in an Afghan quagmire. Shahzad cites repeated interviews and documents to the effect that al-Qa’ida wanted by the 9/11 attacks to polarise Mulsims against the West and to draw the US into Afghanistand and bleed it to death.