General Abdul Rashid Dostum in Mazar-i-Sharif. Dostum was a marshal in the disgraced and dissipated Afghan National Army, and served as first vice president of Afghanistan (which had two, because you can never have too much of a good thing) from 2016 until February 2020.

Corruption. Lies. Deceit. Waste. Evil. And we made it all possible. We financed the whole thing. What many Americans may not know is that along with what is mentioned in the article below U.S. taxpayer dollars, in the hundreds of billions was spent on massive infrastructure improvements in Afghanistan. Throughout the country. Wide well-paved roads. Bridges. Mobile phone towers. Internet. You name it we built it for them. Hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars worth.

And now? If you’re old enough to recall, there were two main reasons for going to Afghanistan.

1.) Find Osama bin Laden — who was watching cable TV in Pakistan before the first U.S. plane and soldier touched down on Afghani dust.

2.) To defeat the Taliban and stop Afghanistan from being the epicenter for Islamic jihadist group training and their safe haven.

It took 20 years, and over $2,000,000,000,000 U.S. taxpayer dollars, and 2,443 American lives lost, now 2,453 and counting with today’s attack at the Kabul airport, 20,666 wounded and the countless lives those wounded know and touch and whose lives will never be the same. Along with all the dead and wounded Brits and allies we talked into going with us — and all the dead, maimed, and injured Afghan people, not soldiers, not Islamist terrorists who got in the way along the way.

It’s time for not mere reflection folks. It’s time to finally, if for the first time begin to be ruthlessly objective and honest.

And this is not — never was — a left vs. right, Republican vs. Democrat thing. Don’t even go there for a nanosecond. Time to perhaps finally break the deluded cycle and become objective, honest, straightforward for a change.

In 20 years…

There were 2 Republican presidents and their administrations.

There were 2 Democratic presidents and their administrations.

There were Congresses that were a majority of Republicans, Congresses that were a majority of Democrats.

Don’t even start for a second to turn this into a left vs. right matter. All to blame. None with an excuse. None blameless.

To make Afghanistan today into the world’s leading location, fully stocked and equipped in the latest and greatest U.S. military equipment and weapons, including more attack helicopters than the Australian Air Force or Canadian Air Force, or many other Western nations air forces have at their disposal — along with all the parts and ammunition to keep everything going, that is Islamic jihadist terrorism — for quite some time. Think how relieved the House of Saud is that they no longer need to finance Islamic terrorism as they have over the years, and how grateful they are to America and the U.S. government for making it possible to equip all those Islamic jihadists making Afghanistan the place to be.

Including we the people who couldn’t be bothered to pay attention as we pursued our vain lives and our own self-interest.

American marketing and propaganda promote Disney World as the greatest place on earth to be?

Which is a lie.

Well, for an Islamist jihad terrorist the greatest place on earth to be is…Afghanistan.

Which as it happens is the truth!

Perhaps, just perhaps, if we the people actually spent more time, so much more time in real prayer — not just praying, not just saying your nightly prayers — but IN PRAYING, deep prayer not asking for self, for the material, the turning to dust things, the selfish things, but focused on the spiritual instead and knowing what that means and doing it? And we spent more dedicated, devoted, sincere time, deep time, real-time in the reading and studying of God’s Word? And were more concerned with pleasing God, learning, and knowing God’s will — and no one can say “How do I do this, I don’t know how to know God’s will!? — HIS WILL IS REVEALED TO EVERY PERSON ON EARTH IN HIS WORD, the Scriptures, the Holy Bible.

Perhaps, just perhaps priorities lives, conditions, situations, perhaps many things, if not everything would be, could be quite different from what it now is.

Imagine that…

…if you can.

Now, want to really get your dander up? Read the article below.

Ken Pullen

Thursday, August 26th, 2021

ACP — A Crooked Path

Afghanistan: $2,226,000,000,000 (That’s Trillion) of Your Money Spent, Much Squandered on Lavish Palaces for Corrupt Officials

August 24, 2021

By Robert Spencer

Reprinted from PJ Media

Over the last twenty years in Afghanistan, 2,443 Americans were killed and 20,666 were wounded, as $2.26 trillion were spent in the quixotic and foredoomed hope of transforming the graveyard of empires into a stable, Western-style republic. But if you were to go to Afghanistan today to try to see the effect of all this profligate spending (which I wouldn’t actually advise, under the circumstances), you’d have an easier time spotting how American money was put to use in the luxury homes of former Afghan government officials rather than, obviously, in actual successes in pushing back the Taliban.

Americans got a telling glimpse of their taxpayer dollars at work in Afghanistan when the Taliban on August 15 entered the residence of General Abdul Rashid Dostum in Mazar-i-Sharif. Dostum was a marshal in the disgraced and dissipated Afghan National Army, and served as first vice president of Afghanistan (which had two, because you can never have too much of a good thing) from 2016 until February 2020. He was a vociferous foe of the Taliban and a key U.S. ally when the first Taliban regime was toppled, although his relationship with Washington later soured (he was accused of war crimes) to the degree that, even while serving as first vice president in the American-backed Afghan government, he was barred in 2016 from entering the U.S.

Nevertheless, he remained an integral part of the government that the U.S. was propping up, and so when Taliban jihadis filmed themselves walking around his unbelievably opulent residence, it was hard not to think about all the rusting bridges, trestles scrawled with graffiti, and pothole-laden roads in America, and wonder if our taxpayer money might have been put to better use. Dostum’s place was what Caesar’s Palace would look like if it were remodeled by a multi-billionaire who thought the original was too modest and austere. Dostum’s place was what the Palace of Versailles would look like if it were remodeled by the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

How could this dedicated military officer and public servant possibly have amassed the funds to pay for his Disneyland dream palace? Why, you and I paid for it, along with all the other American taxpayers. And that’s by no means all that we bought. Dostum wasn’t the only Afghan official who got a luxury home. A report in the UK’s Daily Mail on Saturday noted that “one powerbroker at a Kabul bank used a web of fake firms to make fraudulent loans to ministers, officials and warlords, leading to losses equivalent to one-twelfth of the size of the country’s economy. The bank also spent £117 million [$164 million] on 35 luxury villas on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah island complex, which it used for entertaining.” One unnamed Afghan vice president (they had so many) grabbed $52 million in cash and took off for Dubai, where the parties were no doubt hearty.

In sum, “the waste of taxpayers’ money was astonishing, with ‘ghost’ schools and military forces, counter-narcotic efforts that backfired, dodgy construction and fuel deals siphoning off billions, and cash and gold smuggled out through Kabul airport.” The Pentagon even spent $5.4 million on Tuscan goats imported from Italy into Afghanistan in order to give a boost to the nation’s cashmere industry: the Italian goats were supposed to mate with Afghan goats and create a hardier stock. But the project was botched from the beginning, and the goats simply disappeared. Asked if they had been eaten, John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, responded: “We don’t know. This was so poorly managed.” There went $5.4 million in taxpayer money.

Some money was spent on projects that made some superficial sense, until one pondered them for a minute or two: “Take the spending of £32 million [$44 million] on a single natural gas fuel station – 140 times more than a similar one in Pakistan – only to discover it cost more than the average annual income for Afghans to convert their cars to drive on natural gas, so there was little use.”

The Daily Mail report adds: “At one point, the U.S. Congress estimated £3.3 billion [$4.4 billion] – equal to 22 per cent of Afghanistan’s GDP – was being smuggled out of the country, with two-thirds of this illegally earned.”

Imagine if even some of this money had been restored to its rightful owners via lower tax rates, or put to use in the United States. Nothing was too good for our Afghan allies, while Americans struggled economically and the American infrastructure crumbled. But the “America-First” president was an egregious upstart who had to be removed at all costs.