Not Really Expensive Victory

To crash a disagreeable regime 70 million dollars enough
More and more details appear about the US-led campaign against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, spending of American authorities on the operation, to be exact. As it turned out, Washington spent 70 million dollars to bribe Afghanistan field commanders, this is the explanation how the USA managed to crash Talibs so quickly.

This information is published in the book “Bush At War” by American journalist Bob Woodward. At that, the sum of 70 million dollars doesn’t seem so great if we consider the total spending of the US Administration on the war campaign in Afghanistan. According to some sources, as of now the spending exceeds 10 billion dollars already. And the sum is even increasing, as the US troops are still in Afghanistan.

The book by Woodward is interesting not only due to the figures it mentions; information published in the book is reliable as the journalist compiled the book on his conversations with President Bush and with many officials in the US Administration. These conversations proved the suggestions that there are several groups in the incumbent administration of the USA, and these groups often have different opinions on important political problems.

Within several past months, many of the US leading mass media reported about serious discrepancies between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The While House denied any information about discrepancies in the administration. Nevertheless, there were just few people who trusted those denials. Indeed, the views of Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld upon the Iraqi problem differ too much.

It seems that George W. Bush cannot chose which of the groups to prefer. On one hand, hawks like Cheney and Rumsfeld are closer to him. But on the other hand, the president cannot deny the rationality of Powell’s arguments saying that the USA should be more attentive to the opinion of other countries of the world on important international problems. These arguments are more pragmatic from the point of view of the US interests in the foreign political sphere. But these arguments need more time for realization. At the same time, the hawks offer easier and simpler ways for settlement of international problems; they lay special stress on military force and economic pressure at that. However, the methods suggested by Conservators will certainly bring more problems to the USA.

The problem is that the discrepancies in the US Administration have an effect not only on the US foreign political line, but on stability in the world as well. As far as the USA considers itself a super power, American politicians should be more careful with the methods with which to achieve their goals.

Vasily Bubnov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: https://www.pravda.ru/world/7335-dollar/

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