Thieveristan

I know everybody is transfixed by Lawrence Wright's article in The New Yorker on the cult of Scientology, because it's science fictiony, Hollywoody, gossipy and bizarre-y (and looong) but let me gently coax you to read a far more flabbergasting one: the absurd, and eye opening Dexter Filkins article about how all the money we are giving to the Karzai government in Afghanistan is going to the Taliban, to drug lords and to Karzai's family and friends who build multimillion dollar villas in Dubai while that benighted country is at war. It is a riot.
You will choke with laughter of the bilious kind. I'm sure it's not even news, but once in a while it helps to shake us out of our TV coma induced torpor to perhaps demand the Obama administration to stop futzing around. We are giving gazillions of dollars to thieves.
Let's stop giving money to these bozos. It seems that everywhere we give money, the money is misused. So no more money. I wonder if the Chinese or the Russians would be so naive or cavalier when giving money to allow the disappearance of billions of their dollars and look the other way, as we are doing in Fuckedupistan. I think they'd make sure their yens and rubles were accounted for in as evil a way as possible. Why can't we make sure that our dollars are used in the best way possible? Alas, we bestow our largesse on dubious regimes under the innocent assumption that they are the best we've got going. Here comes idiot Uncle Sam bearing gifts. Everybody plunder!
Let someone else do it. Even if they are evil, it won't really make a difference. Because we are utterly ineffectual. We naively look at this money as some sort of building block for democracy. As if. These people look at this money as a source for their own personal investment. They could care less if their own citizens don't have a pot to piss on or if their country is going back to the Stone Age. They have mansions in Dubai! Built with our taxpayers money! They could care less if the money that they are giving to the Taliban is the same that is allocated to fighting it. They are laughing all the way to the bank. Or in this case, from the bank. So let them all rot together in that shithole. Enough. And let's get out of dodge.