Wasted Money, Wasted Lives
by James Glaser
July 21, 2010

October 7^th, 2001. That is the date we started our war in Afghanistan. Since that time we have been pouring money and blood into that country, in hopes of bringing it into the 21st century. You know what? It's not working. We have been wasting blood and money.

Failure to deliver electricity highlights setbacks in effort to repair war-ravaged Afghanistan

BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE, RICHARD LARDNER AND DEB RIECHMANN
AP News

Jul 19, 2010 01:20 EDT

The goal is to transform Afghanistan into a modern nation, fueled by a U.S.-led effort pouring $60 billion into bringing electricity, clean water, jobs, roads and education to this crippled country. But the results so far—or lack of them—threaten to do more harm than good.

The reconstruction efforts have stalled and stumbled at many turns since the U.S. military arrived in 2001, undermining President Barack Obama's vow to deliver a safer, stable Afghanistan capable of stamping out the insurgency and keeping al-Qaida from re-establishing its bases here.

Poppy fields thrive, with each harvest of illegal opium fattening the bankrolls of terrorists and drug barons. Passable roads remain scarce and unprotected, isolating millions of Afghans who remain cut off from jobs and education. Electricity flows to only a fraction of the country's 29 million people.

Thousands of American troops have been killed or wounded. According to the Veterans Administration tens of thousands of veterans of the Afghan war have mental health problems that will be with them for the rest of their lives, and thousands more have traumatic brain injuries from all the road side bombs.

All of that blood and treasure, for what?

But the number of Afghans with access to electricity has only inched up from 6 percent in 2001 to an estimated 10 percent now, well short of the development goal to provide power to 65 percent of urban and 25 percent of rural households by the end of this year.

Like our war in Iraq, in Afghanistan we keep no numbers of the innocent civilians killed or maimed, but if our troops are having mental health problems because of their time in the combat zone, just imagine how many Afghanis suffer the same problem. The Afghans don't get to rotate home, they live in the war zone 24/7, 365 days a year, year in and year out.

So we are in our 9^th year of fighting in Afghanistan, and in all that time we have increased electrical production only 4%. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and over a thousand of our troops have given their all. What a waste.

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