Goverment waste 101, part II

In July 2012, CBS’s 60 Minutes program had a segment on two young Afghan women being trained in Texas as the first new generation of female helicopter pilots. Until today, Afghanistan only had one, trained by the Russians after they invaded. They were supposed to be trained using the Russian Mi-17 helicopters, of which the Afghan Air Force have 48.

I was pleased to see how we were helping them to become a valuable part of the Afghan military in the hopeless task of defeating the Taliban, who are just waiting for us to pick up our marbles and go home. If the Russians couldn’t defeat the Taliban (with our help, providing rockets to shoot down their aircraft), and we (including NATO) can’t defeat the Taliban, what makes anyone think that the Afghan army can defeat them?

It’s similar to what happened in Vietnam; we withdrew but continued to fund the South Vietnamese government for a few years until our government had created a discrete distance between getting out and the delayed disaster. We then stopped giving them money and soon thereafter, South Vietnam’s government collapsed.

The Los Angeles Times just published a story showing just how naive our government is. To paraphrase Captain Renault, I am shocked. Deeply shocked.

The two women, the focus of the gushing 60 Minutes story, are currently grounded in Afghanistan. Why? Because the male dominated Afghan military doesn’t want them, according to the newspaper,  so they’ve spent their days at home with their families, reading, watching TV, shopping and helping with housework. They don’t even have flight suits or uniforms. Nothing.

According to the LA Times, they were, in fact, not trained on the Russian Mi-17  helicopters but on U.S. Army OH-58 Kiowa Warrior scout aircraft. Afghanistan doesn’t have any.

That being so, they had no idea how to fly the Russian aircraft when they got home, so they just sit around, waiting and waiting after U.S. taxpayers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars training them to fly to nowhere.

I’m waiting to win the lottery… waiting and waiting.

If you’ve ever wondered how our government wastes so much money, you can use this as an example. There are more examples to come… parts III, IV, V, VI and a lot more.