Hitting Bottom in Foggy Bottom

[Sylvan]

Sylvan:

Well, that's the $64 Billion issue.

What structure is going to work (and have to be created) for a real and viable Afghanistan?

As a planner, I watch these mounting projects to pave streets, as an example. Anybody in the planning business knows that if you pave a road, you better make sure the sub-base is secure, or you will be re-building it within three years. Even with that, you have to start maintenance right away, do serious crack-filling in five years, and repave every 20 (assuming quality construction and maintenance).

What possible productive purpose could result from paving a road? Short-term road crew work. Lots of contract graft. Lots of action and ego.

How is this thing going to be maintained, and by who?

Among competing priorities that could actually make these people's lives better, was this a wise use of resources?

Without structure and systems (especially a viable economic and revenue system), these types of projects add little to know value. We measure our successes based on western input metrics, but can't understand why there are no eastern outputs.

Afghanistan needs, as a minimum, a very much more complex, realistic, and historically-grounded approach to governance, and not a US Governance Textbook 101 approach. When does that discussion start?

It starts when diplomacy is tempered by experience outside the embassy set.
AKA, never.
What diplomat is going to tell a senior official, "Oh, btw, your constitution sucks." Especially when it was largely our dumb butts who helped them craft it.