Turns out that the Taliban isn’t getting all that much of its money from drugs. Why get it from drugs when you can get it from Uncle Sam?
KABUL – It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country.Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for the insurgents. Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban themselves prefer to term it, “spoils of war,” the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.
“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one U.S. Embassy official, speaking privately.
It’s classic East Coast politics. The Taliban are the mob, and they get their cut. A big cut.
Then they use the money, from us, to fight us.
And why shouldn’t they fight us? WE’RE ATTACKING THEM.
What’s lost in most of these discussions is the obvious elephant in the room — the only reason the Taliban is fighting us is because we’re there attacking them.
Why are we there, spending $133 million a day?
I repeat, we are spending throwing away $133 million A DAY, five and a half million bucks AN HOUR fighting the natives who are using our own money to defend themselves.
And the generals admit we are losing there.
Five and a half MILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR fighting a “war” that we are losing.
Only to find out that a lot of our money is going to the same people we’re fighting.
Now, my absurdity meter has redlined quite a few times over the years, but I think this completely smashes it.
Of course what those figures don’t tell you is how much of that $5.5 million bucks an hour is going directly to American corporations. I mean, it’s not going to the soldiers. Right? It’s going to the corporations who supply the machinery, the gasoline and diesel fuel (ESPECIALLY them), the arms makers, the bootmakers, hell, there must be hundreds of big corporations for whom this is a BIG portion of their daily cash flow.
$5.5 million bucks an hour. To fight an opponent that we are also funding.
That’s what America has turned into.
The dog has caught its own tail and is devouring it.