Now, I'm in the military, and accordingly very enthusiastic about killing people and blowing shit up, but our recent adventures in invading countries has demonstrated that killing people and blowing shit up only gets you so far. The epitome of this principle is Afghanistan.
For those of you who haven't been paying attention to current events for the last decade, the story in Afghanistan goes something like this: We bomb the living Christ out of it, refuse to put troops on the ground, Osama bin Laden gets away, warlords with the help of US airpower drive the Taliban to Pakistan, Hamid Karzai is crowned President, we don't build Afghanistan's infrastructure, we don't reign in the warlords, we don't convince Pakistan to stop funding Islamic militants, the Taliban watches us fuck up consistently for FIVE YEARS, the Taliban invades Afghanistan a second time, they garner support because the populace is tired of how corrupt the government is, and we find ourselves in a miserable quagmire that may or may not end in an Afghanistan that doesn't harbor and train violent terrorists.
If you look closely at the events recounted above, you'll notice that the parts that involved killing people and blowing shit up actually went pretty well. The parts that involved, say building roads and canals that would facilitate Afghanistan developing an economy that is based on something other than the sale of opium, or reigning in Pakistan's support of Islamic extremism, or building an Afghan government that isn't awfully corrupt-in short, the parts that would involve the State Department and international aid-not nearly as successful.
This is because the US military is in fact the best funded military in the entire world, by a significant margin. If it wasn't good at killing people and blowing shit up, the American people would have a right to be upset. The downside of using the military to do things, however, is that there are wide swaths of foreign policy in which killing people and blowing shit up is counterproductive. These swaths are where things like "diplomacy" and "building a national infrastructure" are really useful. And guess who does all the things that the military doesn't do! The State Department and international aid programs!
If the Bush administration had actually cared about aid programs and diplomacy those FIVE YEARS that the Taliban waited before returning to Afghanistan, it's safe to say that the Taliban would have been significantly less popular upon returning. Hell, they might have just stayed in Pakistan. Hell, they might have all abandoned their extremist ways or been killed or captured already.
While I'm playing pretend, if we had provided international aid to build secular schools in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (where the Taliban is from), they might have all become engineers or astrophysicists instead of AK-47 wielding, murderous zealots who were educated in madrassas.
This last exercise in fantasy leads to the most important part of why it's a good idea to fund the State Department and international aid programs. Diplomacy and humanitarian efforts help prevent wars by doing things like "talking things out" and "educating the populace so that they don't become semiliterate terrorists who were educated in the more militant Deobandi madrassas."
Also, talking and education are relatively cheap, as opposed to wars, which do things like take your budget surplus and turn it into a staggering budget deficit overnight.
Paul Ryan would probably know all of this, but apparently he's been too busy reading Ayn Rand to pay attention to the conduct of America's wars, despite being a Congressman.
PS: I feel like this second post might not live up to the aspirations of the first post. Oh well.
For those of you who haven't been paying attention to current events for the last decade, the story in Afghanistan goes something like this: We bomb the living Christ out of it, refuse to put troops on the ground, Osama bin Laden gets away, warlords with the help of US airpower drive the Taliban to Pakistan, Hamid Karzai is crowned President, we don't build Afghanistan's infrastructure, we don't reign in the warlords, we don't convince Pakistan to stop funding Islamic militants, the Taliban watches us fuck up consistently for FIVE YEARS, the Taliban invades Afghanistan a second time, they garner support because the populace is tired of how corrupt the government is, and we find ourselves in a miserable quagmire that may or may not end in an Afghanistan that doesn't harbor and train violent terrorists.
If you look closely at the events recounted above, you'll notice that the parts that involved killing people and blowing shit up actually went pretty well. The parts that involved, say building roads and canals that would facilitate Afghanistan developing an economy that is based on something other than the sale of opium, or reigning in Pakistan's support of Islamic extremism, or building an Afghan government that isn't awfully corrupt-in short, the parts that would involve the State Department and international aid-not nearly as successful.
This is because the US military is in fact the best funded military in the entire world, by a significant margin. If it wasn't good at killing people and blowing shit up, the American people would have a right to be upset. The downside of using the military to do things, however, is that there are wide swaths of foreign policy in which killing people and blowing shit up is counterproductive. These swaths are where things like "diplomacy" and "building a national infrastructure" are really useful. And guess who does all the things that the military doesn't do! The State Department and international aid programs!
If the Bush administration had actually cared about aid programs and diplomacy those FIVE YEARS that the Taliban waited before returning to Afghanistan, it's safe to say that the Taliban would have been significantly less popular upon returning. Hell, they might have just stayed in Pakistan. Hell, they might have all abandoned their extremist ways or been killed or captured already.
While I'm playing pretend, if we had provided international aid to build secular schools in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (where the Taliban is from), they might have all become engineers or astrophysicists instead of AK-47 wielding, murderous zealots who were educated in madrassas.
This last exercise in fantasy leads to the most important part of why it's a good idea to fund the State Department and international aid programs. Diplomacy and humanitarian efforts help prevent wars by doing things like "talking things out" and "educating the populace so that they don't become semiliterate terrorists who were educated in the more militant Deobandi madrassas."
Also, talking and education are relatively cheap, as opposed to wars, which do things like take your budget surplus and turn it into a staggering budget deficit overnight.
Paul Ryan would probably know all of this, but apparently he's been too busy reading Ayn Rand to pay attention to the conduct of America's wars, despite being a Congressman.
PS: I feel like this second post might not live up to the aspirations of the first post. Oh well.
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