Courtesy Robert Clark/TIME
“Once the dump trucks and bulldozers have cleared away the rubble and a thousand funeral Masses have been said, once the streets are swept clean of ash and glass and the stores and monuments and airports reopen, once we have begun to explain this to our children and to ourselves, what will we do? What else but build new cathedrals, and if they are bombed, build some more. Because the faith is in the act of building, not the building itself, and no amount of terror can keep us from scraping the sky.”—Nancy Gibbs (written three days after the bombing of the Twin Towers, but before the big holes were “built” in their place)
My heart sank when I read the print edition of this story yesterday. In short, $360 million of U.S. taxpayer money, intended to fund the military, was outsourced to Middle East criminals, terrorists, and even the Taliban, the very organization that money aimed to disrupt.
Here’s how I processed the news.
- I’m thankful to live in a country with a free press and democratic government willing to share such corrupt news. Neither are perfect, but reports like this are proof that there is still good in the world; good enough to let this kind of stuff come to light.
- $360 million is a fraction of total defense spending, and thankfully, as far as we know, much of it still falls in the right hands. Unfortunately, 1/3 of a billion is an incredible amount of money for criminals and mountain-dwelling terrorists intent on building bombs and blowing things up. It’s inexcusable.
- Why can’t the U.S. military enlist cooks, truck drivers, security convoys— virtual everything— from within? You know, like the good ole days, when soldiers worked in mess halls etc. Stop outsourcing our military, and we’ll minimize said corruption.
- Stop awarding closed defense contracts or open contracts to non-U.S. suppliers. What advantage does this bring? I understand President Obama awards contracts to Afghan companies in an effort to stabilize their economy. But is that the purpose of defense spending? Shouldn’t it be defense, not economic development? It’s counterproductive.
- Can we pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq already, Vietnam style? Just do it. I know there are cronies in those countries who don’t want the sugar daddy to leave, but it is high time. Then reinvest half of the savings into intelligence operations to thwart and outsmart terrorism as best we can, as opposed to occupying nations.
Did I miss anything?
