Anyone See This - $100 Bills Dropped in Afghanistan

treeman-

Lynus would be proud. I did pick up a little of this army stuff!!!

 

<B>Actually this is Psy-Ops 101. If you can't win the heart and minds, then buy them... </B>

Unfortunately, I think this is what gets US foreign policy into so much trouble in the first place. It's the whole "give them fish or teach them to fish" theory in a way. The money is great, until you stop giving it to them. If that was the only reason they liked you, well, they'll stop liking you soon after the good will wears off. (this applies to the food too) Hopefully, we'll follow this up with some "teaching how to fish" funding.

<B>The dollars aren't even the important psychological factor here; they're just a gimmick. The goatherder who just recieved 6 months' earnings will look at the picture of Bush and conclude that he is a very good man... </B>

Agreed about the gimmick thing. I just think it's a bad gimmick. Providing 100 people food would generate more goodwill than 1 man with $100. (Yeah, I know we're already giving them food, but we're certainly not covering the entire country. Besides which, buying food to distribute also has the side benefit of helping the US economy)

 

Major:

Oh, c'mon!

When was the last time you had a free educational course offered to you? Education costs money. Moiney has to come from somewhere. Afghans have no money. They will have no money, and hence no education - until they have some money to get both.

I think there's probably a correlation between per capita income and educational level... Well, we just boosted their per capita income significantly (considering it was frighteningly close to zero 6 months ago).

What do you want to do, drop engineers and philosophers out of airplanes over Afghanistan??? Give them some money first, and help them to rebuild. Then all of the well-educated Afghans scattered abroad will actually come back and educate the rest of the populace.

The only possible effect dropping $ from the sky could have on this are would be economic stimulation. That is not a bad thing. And it's not like this is our only effort there (we have dropped far more $ into the new govt's coffers to rebuild infrastructure than we have from the sky).

It works.

 

<B>When was the last time you had a free educational course offered to you? Education costs money. Moiney has to come from somewhere. Afghans have no money. They will have no money, and hence no education - until they have some money to get both.

I think there's probably a correlation between per capita income and educational level... Well, we just boosted their per capita income significantly (considering it was frighteningly close to zero 6 months ago). </B>

That's true in the long-run. However, we're not trying to help them build a first-world economy here. We need to help them establish a basic 3rd world economy, which isn't necessarily built on skilled labor. Education isn't so important, in my opinion, as infrastructure in the short-term.

<B>The only possible effect dropping $ from the sky could have on this are would be economic stimulation. That is not a bad thing. And it's not like this is our only effort there (we have dropped far more $ into the new govt's coffers to rebuild infrastructure than we have from the sky). </B>

I agree that providing money is useful and very important. However, I don't agree with the dropping it from the sky part. I'm all for the other parts of it. It's not a big deal, but I just think it's a waste of money and effort. If you're going to drop things from the sky, drop food. If you're going to give money out, attach it to jobs and other meaningful things that will help build infrastructure.

 

Major:

This is true. And we are providing the funds for the rebuilding of that infrastructure to the interim government. Are we missing something here?

Hell, dropping $100 bills to farmers and goatherders is just a bonus. The real work of developing infrastructure is far more advanced than these crude efforts.

We have been doing such (dropping food from the air), and several people have died because of it (there was at least one instance of a food pallet hitting a wandering family...). We're trying to get food in through a safer route now - on the ground...

Dropping money doesn't kill anyone. And the more money we put into the area, the more jobs that will be created. People there have no job because there is nothing to do. There is nothing to do because no one has the money to improve anything. If they have money, then they can improve things - and give people jobs to do the improving. People who have money - and $100 is alot of money there - can hire other people to do work that would not otherwise be done...

There are no drawbacks to this, aside from the financial cost to us. If you want to talk about benevolent humanitarianism without benefit - altruism - dropping money from the sky is a great example.

 

How will they convert this money? Blackmarket?

 

Who says Ken Lay has no influence over George W. Bush?

Good to know that the President has learned how to throw money around for influence. File this one under "Enron Diplomacy".