{"id":2790,"date":"2010-09-05T00:48:34","date_gmt":"2010-09-05T07:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=2790"},"modified":"2010-09-05T00:46:51","modified_gmt":"2010-09-05T07:46:51","slug":"getting-it-even-more-wrong-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/05\/getting-it-even-more-wrong-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting It Even More Wrong in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since Obama took office, he has shown zero tolerance for corruption in Afghanistan.\u00a0 Since that is the only thing he has done right, where that war is concerned, the worst course of action would be to change that policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"5afghanistan-corruption\"<\/a> US military commanders in Afghanistan are developing a strategy that would tolerate limited corruption<\/strong> but target large-scale abuses, The Washington Post reported late Friday.<\/p>\n

Citing unnamed senior defense officials, the newspaper said Pentagon officials had concluded that the Taliban insurgency was the most pressing threat to stability in Afghanistan rather than corruption<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

They also believe that a sweeping effort to stamp out corruption would create chaos and a governance vacuum that the Taliban could exploit, the report said.<\/p>\n

“There are areas where you need strong leadership, and some of those leaders are not entirely pure<\/strong>,” the paper quotes a senior defense official as saying.<\/p>\n

“But they can help us be more effective in going after the primary threat, which is the Taliban.”<\/p>\n

Graft is a major issue in Afghanistan, which is rated by international monitor Transparency International as second only to lawless Somalia on its scale of the world’s most corrupt countries<\/span><\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Alternet<\/a>><\/p>\n

I have repeatedly said that public support is an element without which a COIN (Counter Insurgency) strategy cannot succeed.\u00a0 I have also repeatedly said that the US cannot achieve public support as long as we continue to support the corrupt energy industry puppet installed by the Texas Taliban.\u00a0 The decision to ignore corruption is the final nail in the COIN coffin.\u00a0 If we stay in Afghanistan at all, a bad idea in my view, our strategy should be counter-terrorism in the border region with Pakistan, and cutting off aid to Hamid Karzai.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since Obama took office, he has shown zero tolerance for corruption in Afghanistan.\u00a0 Since that is the only thing he has done right, where that war is concerned, the worst course of action would be to change that policy. US military commanders in Afghanistan are developing a strategy that would tolerate limited corruption but target […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}