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The Wall Street Journal isn’t happy about Afghanistan

Published on 26 Comments on The Wall Street Journal isn’t happy about Afghanistan

Behold the Wall Street Journal's opinionmongers on Afghanistan:

It's just one Biden crisis after another. You'd almost think they had something against the guy.

26 thoughts on “The Wall Street Journal isn’t happy about Afghanistan”

      2. oakchairbc

        The lab leak theory revolves around a lab in Wuhan that got part of its funding from the American government and which is owned by various Europeans and Americans and Chinese people.

        Though if one is a racist or clueless on the the topic they will do what you just did.

    2. colbatguano

      I can't decide whose opinion about the situation in Afghanistan I care less about, Karl Rove's or Henry Kissinger's.

  5. golack

    There is a write up in Slate about aid to Haiti. Basically most of the money pledged never makes it to the island--it cycles among NGO's and pays for their salaries and shipping costs for supplies to be doled out (or hoarded) by those with connections. The people in real need--they have to scavenge what the can to survive with little useful aid provided (t-shirts for photo shoots?).

    Reminds me of Afghanistan. It costs a "trillion" dollars. But how much of that money actually made it to the country, and more specifically, to those in need? Are people upset about what will happen to the Afghani's or upset that the money spigot is being turned off?

    1. bbleh

      There has been some reporting about this, I dunno how reliable, to the effect that 80-90% of the (considerably more than) $1T spent "on" Afghanistan went to US firms and contractors, and that even the large majority of the money spent "in" the country went to (mostly) US firms and contractors and so left almost as soon as it arrived.

      There has been much complaining about the corruption among Afghans, which is undeniably a major problem, but according to these reports the amounts lost to endemic corruption are far, far less than those skimmed off by US sinks.

      This may also explain why the WSJ is so upset. Biden has shut down a major gravy train, and the money boys are not happy about that.

      1. rational thought

        But you seem to be just assuming that anything paid to a US " contractor " is wasted or corruption. That is not a fair assumption.

        But something else was going on that is different and bad but in a different way.

        A decent amount of the actual fighting in Afghanistan against the taliban was by us security " contractors ". And, to a significant extent , these were really just us army in everything but name.

        They were no more corrupt than however corrupt the us army was and maybe even more efficient per dollar in their actual job ( many were the best trained former us soldiers who otherwise might just have remained in the army itself forming a top Cadre).

        The use of " contractors " in Afghanistan and Iraq was somewhat an illusion and intended to be one, to hide that we really had more troops there than admitted , they were just classified as contractors.

        When a former us army soldier who went back as a contractor and got killed fighting, they could avoid counting them as a US soldier Kia.

        And a lot of complaints that US contractors got all their equipment out before the pullout. Well good. I wish the us army had done as well and not left so many weapons for the taliban.

  6. Larry Jones

    Just a point of information: An "afghani" is the basic unit of currency in Afghanistan. The current exchange rate is about 86 afghanis to one U.S. dollar. A person who is a citizen of Afghanistan is known as an Afghan.

  7. chester

    Seems to me that the only way Biden can get good WSJ press is to announce a new tax break for pass throughs and those making more than 10 million p.a.
    Certainly works for the other guys.

  8. spatrick

    Neocons returning to the scene of the crime. Their crime!

    "I place less value on Karl Rove’s opinion than the dog turd I accidentally stepped on yesterday."

    Well spoken about the "turd blossom"

    1. Salamander

      Good catch! Now that "DT" (the original, and not that other old retiree) has been out of the spotlight for over a decade, I'd forgotten his charming nickname.

      Say what you will about Junior Bush, the man really had a way with words.

    1. rational thought

      That clearly is a headline meant to put any positive spin on this they can find for biden. Wow, good thing we had such a great predictor in charge. Cnn is moving to reduce the negative coverage.

      I think you can tell the commentors who have been trying to defend biden for a week know this is really not good news. Because what a dearth of Afghanistan discussion today after such a big event. Seems that they are largely in " try to ignore " mode now. Or trying to figure out how they can spin this. Cnn already set one spin. Wow, didn't the administration do such a great job in intelligence of knowing of it in advance and warning of it,, don't pay attention about how bad it actually is.

    1. oakchairbc

      There was one opinion piece where they talked about how Trump was a brilliant genius for committing billions in tax and financial fraud.

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