'President Hamid Karzai won reelection after cronies stuffed thousands of ballot boxes. He later admitted the CIA had delivered bags of cash to his office for years, calling it “nothing unusual.”
In public, as President Barack Obama escalated the war and Congress approved billions of additional dollars in support, the commander in chief and lawmakers promised to crack down on corruption and hold crooked Afghans accountable.
In reality, U.S. officials backed off, looked away and let the thievery become more entrenched than ever, according to a trove of confidential government interviews obtained by The Washington Post.'
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Consumed by corruption, December 9, 2019
'Amazingly enough, though, corruption nearly always merits a mention when the world’s leaders are describing failures – whether their own or, more commonly, those of their predecessors.
“We spent years, hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of human lives in Iraq [or Afghanistan, you name it] – but the corrupt government of al-Maliki [or Karzai, you name them] alienated the people with its thieving, opening the path to victory to radicals armed with slogans about honest, fair government and RPGs.”
This leads to an obvious question. Guys, if corruption is preventing us from finding solutions to the problems of the “big agenda”, has the time perhaps come to raise it to a priority on that agenda?'
- Navalny,
Only action against corruption can solve the world’s biggest problems, August 19, 2021
Context'..global corruption as being the root cause of many of the world's big problems.''..manic excess has gone off the rails .. Injecting Trillions of new “money”..'('..its Credit expansion .. China Bubble thesis') - Weary of Their Experiment in Capitalism - By Doug Noland'..BIS chastises central banks .. More fundamentally, monetary policy cannot be the engine of growth.''..a complete breakdown in discipline - in central banking, in Washington borrowing and spending..'(US National Security Archives) - ' ..The U.S. government under four presidents misled the American people for nearly two decades .. deeply flawed Pentagon strategy..'