The War on America by Americans

Speaking of magazines, I just finished an article in the New Yorker, 'The Bidding War' by Matthieu Aikins. The article details the corruption in the military as they threw money away during the Afghan War. Lots and lost of money. General Petraeus called money another weapons system and encouraged the spending of vast amounts. Simple theory was that the money would trickle down (where have we heard that theory before?) and raise the living standards of the average Afghan who subsisted on less than $200 a year.

Some notes from the article; the Afghan War has gone on for 15 years. A war, and a General or two that were handpicked by the Republicans. During the 15 years, Congress has appropriated $800 BILLION dollars to pay for it. $800 billion? I can't even imagine that much money. What does it look like? A $113 billion was spent for 'reconstruction'. That's more money than was spent on the Marshall Plan after WWII.

A lot of the money was spent to hire civilian contractors to do the dangerous little jobs, like trucking, so that the soldiers would be safe. An admirable thing to do! By June of 2010 there were 107,000 contractors. Today, those contractors outnumber the troops by 3 to 1. The US spent $87 billion on contractors between 2007 to 2014.  

The article is really about one trucking contractor, Hikmatullah Shadman. And as you read the article and see how much money was thrown away, you would have a hard time thinking that Hikman was guilty of anything. I know that I don't. But what I am certain of is the guilt of all the Americans that subverted that money for their own purposes. And there are hundreds; ranging from Generals to Privates. 115 US troops have been convicted of theft, fraud and etc. That's not enough. Petraeus should be doing time as well...