US approves massive war budget
Updated
Still in Washington, and the Democrat-dominated US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved a 96-billion dollar measure to pay for the war in Afghanistan and its ongoing involvement in Iraq.
The plan is part of three-point-four trillion compromise budget plan for 2010, which includes the 787-billion dollar economic stimulus package announced earlier this year. With more heavy spending on aid to Pakistan and Afghanistan, will Congress insist on greater accountability from both countries?
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Christine Fair, senior political scientist with the Rand Corporation
- Listen:
- Windows Media
CHRISTINE FAIR: Both the Senate but even more so, in the House version of the Pakistan Assistance Act is really requiring greater transparency - it wants the Pakistanis to adopt international accounting standards and you've had members of the House of Representatives say on national television, that in the past that in fact, US monies were stolen or otherwise inappropriately used. So I think you do see this and this is certainly apparent in the testimony that's been given on the hill that there really is a concerted interest in getting a better bargain for American generosity.
SEN LAM: And also, do you think Congress might demand a fresh rethink of the South Asia quagmire before approving the funds?
CHRISTINE FAIR: I don't think there's a serious risk of that, although you never know. This administration, for better or for worse, has really made Afghanistan and Pakistan the cornerstones of its policy. And that seems to have, at least for now, generally speaking, bilateral support, bipartisan support. Now nearer to the next round of elections, I do expect the Republicans to back away from this, because they do realise they lost because of the unpopular Iraq war, and certainly as we continue on in Afghanistan the public may grow tired of it. But certainly for now there appears to be bipartisan support that this is an important priority.
SEN LAM: Pakistan earlier this week suggested to the US to hand over the drones, the drones that have been flying over Pakistani territory and exacting some damage on Pakistani civilians. Do you think the US might consider handing over control of the drones? Might that be a way for the US to extricate itself from the sticky issue of civilian casualties?
CHRISTINE FAIR: Unfortunately I don't because the reports, to my knowledge, have not yet been confirmed. In the news report that was broken by the 'LA Times', the US had agreed to give the Pakistanis more input in the execution of the operations. We have a very real problem that the overlap of who the enemy is, is actually quite narrow. Americans and Pakistanis have a narrow set of enemies that they share in common and there are many people that the Americans believe to be the enemy, such as Mullah Omar, Hekmatyar, Jalaluddin Hakani, that the Pakistanis still continue to support. But some of the folks that we view as enemies, the Americans view as enemies, are actually viewed as assets by the Pakistanis. So I think this is going to be, if in fact the report's true, it's not going to be as sweeping as people may have thought at first blush.
SEN LAM: And the throwing of money into South Asia - do you think this might help in the US campaign or do you think there has to be a rethink of US strategy that is not just based on more troops and more military hardware?
CHRISTINE FAIR: I mean, this is going to be the perennial argument. I have a somewhat different view. I think what we really need is what we really don't have and that is civilian surge. What's going to stabilise Afghanistan is it being able to govern effectively without the massive corruption and incompetence that is so apparent at this point. We need more people to train the police, we need more people to train the military. Now obviously that's a capacity that could be filled by military personnel. But we need people to do judicial training, parliamentary training, you name a ministry, it needs help. So there really does need to be a greater focus away from kinetics and towards governance, and this is a move that actually does not enjoy widespread support. There's a countervailing view about what we really care about in Afghanistan is Al-Qaeda and that all of this talk about government building is in fact beyond the purview of the Americans and certainly beyond the purview and will of NATO. And I think those are very serious and legitimate concerns.
