On March 11, U.S. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales allegedly murdered native civilians in Afghanistan.
While many Afghanis have demanded blood justice for these killings, the United States government has opted to take a different route.
Money.
The U.S. plans to award families $50,000 per deceased family member, and $11,000 compensation for each person wounded.
If the families of these deceased are receiving compensation from the United States government, shouldn’t the same type of courtesy be extended to the families of the deceased U.S. soldiers killed by the Afghan people?
You will notice that the Afghani government isn’t coming forward to apologize or offer to pay for those wrongful and uncalled for deaths caused by its citizens.
That’s not going to happen.
No, the Afghanis see America as an occupier, not a liberator.
And that’s not likely to change.
Soldiers don’t exactly endear themselves when they urinate on corpses or torch piles of Qurans.
You can’t fix those things with money.
They want us out.
Meanwhile, we soldier on as the military throws its human treasure and our treasury into the quagmire.
These latest killings will cost the U.S. government about $1 million. Small change in the total that keeps mounting in the 10-year war.
It’s going to take more than money to patch things up.
Money didn’t work when the U.S. came into the country with suitcases full of cash that it can’t track to this day.
In fact, some of this money probably went for weapons used against our own soldiers.
The U.S. loves to throw money at its problems. It’s our nature.
Over here that might work. Over here it often works.
But our problems in Afghanistan go deeper than dollars.
The only solution is to get out.
But that’s going to happen only after a lot more money and lives have been lost.
Trying to solve our problems in Afghanistan with money has proved only slightly more insipid than trying to solve them with bullets.
And now, as the bodies pile up in that arid place, our pocketbooks are languishing.
The monetary cost associated with this cumbersome conflict is exceeded only in human cost.
Are you ready to foot the next bill?