Arnold Fields, retired Marine General, and the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) for the past 3 years has resigned. I don’t know why he chose to do so now, but maybe the message he gave Congress and the Administration, i.e., that the reconstruction effort was rife with billions of dollars of waste and was becoming an ever more costly exercise in futility had something to so with it. The fact that he was under attack by Ttree Republican Senators (Coburn, Grassley and Collins)and one Democrat (Claire McCaskill-MO) certainly was a factor:
In September, a top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, three Republican senators and non-profit group Project on Government Oversight, urged U.S. President Barack Obama to fire Fields, who they accused of failing to do his job. […]
Fields has previously defended the work of his agency, which estimates that the United States has spent $51 billion on Afghanistan reconstruction since 2002, and that the number is set to rise to $71 billion by next year.
“Under General Fields’ tenure, SIGAR produced numerous critical reports that have improved reconstruction efforts, and helped insure that U.S.-funded programs are achieving their objectives,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
U.S. reconstruction activities are a major component in an even bigger outside assistance effort involving dozens of donor countries and hundreds of aid groups, large and small. Field’s office described in a report late last year a “confusing labyrinth” of agencies and contractors in that aid effort.
Let’s be honest for a moment. Whatever Fields’ faults, this is simply a case of killing the messenger for delivering the message no one wanted to hear. Certainly General Fields delivered a message of waste and fraud in Afghanistan that Wasghington politicians who support the war didn’t want the American Public to hear.
[Note: this story is from 2009]
“The reconstruction effort is taking place in a complex, challenging, dangerous and inhospitable environment. Participants at all levels brave the difficulties in a gallant effort and should be commended for their many sacrifices. However, their sacrifices will not bring about success if there is no clear and unified strategy on which to focus and to which all partners in the reconstruction effort are unequivocally committed.”
“Based on my recent trips to Afghanistan, I fear there are major weaknesses in strategy. Although SIGAR has not completed an in-depth review of reconstruction strategies, there is a broad consensus among those with whom I have spoken that reconstruction efforts are fragmented and that existing strategies lack coherence.” […]
The report has been read with interest by US politicians. Rep. Ike Skelton, the House of Representatives’ Armed Services Committee Chairman, said: “I’m encouraged by the progress made by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in building a strong capacity for oversight since its first quarterly report.
“Efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan reconstruction programs are vital to helping Afghans build security and stability within the country’s borders and throughout the region. At the same time, I’m troubled by many of the report’s findings. The report describes fragmented reconstruction efforts and incoherent strategies with ‘major weaknesses'”.
This is especially the case since these Beltway politicos continue to support pouring more and more billions of dollars into Afghanistan during a war that the vast majority of Americans oppose:
December 30th, 2010
Washington (CNN) – More than six in ten Americans oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan, according to a new national poll. And a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday also indicates that 56 percent of the public believes that things are going badly for the U.S. in Afghanistan. […]
Sixty-three percent of people questioned in the poll say they oppose the war, with 35 percent saying they support the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.
Anyone who assumes the job of overseeing the reconstruction of Afghanistan amid the corruption of President Karzai’s regime and during the middle of a war with the Taliban is putting him or herself in an impossible situation. The job is a career killer.
Reconstructing Afghanistan is a fool’s mission that benefits Karzai and his cronies, and corrupt US contractors, but is never likely to accomplish its goals of a peaceful, prosperous, stable Afghanistan. What continuing to throw good money after bad will do is pad the bottom lines of firms like KBR, already known for its record of fraud and abuse in Iraq, and now a leading beneficiary of the Afghanistan reconstruction efforts:
The single greatest beneficiary of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary. KBR has been paid nearly $32 billion since 2001. In May, April Stephenson, director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency, testified that KBR was linked to “the vast majority” of war-zone fraud cases and a majority of the $13 billion in “questioned” or “unsupported” costs. According to Agency, it sent the inspector general “a total of 32 cases of suspected overbilling, bribery and other violations since 2004.”
According to the Associated Press, which obtained an early copy of the commission’s report, “billions of dollars” of the total paid to KBR “ended up wasted due to poorly defined work orders, inadequate oversight and contractor inefficiencies.”
KBR is at the center of a lethal scandal involving the electrocution deaths of more than a dozen U.S. soldiers, allegedly as a result of faulty electrical work done by the company. The DoD paid KBR more than $80 million in bonuses for the very work that resulted in the electrocution deaths.
After Fields valiant but ultimately fruitless efforts to stem the tide of waste, abuse and fraud in the Afghanistan reconstruction effort, who with any real competence or integrity is going to be willing to replace him? This is a mission that has already failed. The problem is that no one in Washington wants to admit that fact.
Instead, these politicians are beholden to the contractors like KBR who are bleeding the US Treasury dry in Afghanistan and Iraq, while Republicans propose eliminating health care reform, cutting social security and weakening the US safety net in a time when we are faced with he greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Their continued support for an un-winnable, wasteful and costly war in Afghanistan is proof of the disconnect between the goals of of our elected officials and the desires of the American people.
