CIA Corrupts Puppet Afghan Government

Is the CIA just a nest of incompetent fools? One could easily assume that after looking at their ridiculous actions regarding the Afghan government (a puppet government installed by the United States in an election where only American-approved candidates could run for office). For more than 10 years now, the CIA has been dropping off suitcases, backpacks, and trash bags full of money each month at the Afghan president's office -- money that totals in the tens of millions of dollars.

I guess the CIA thought it was buying the good will of the Afghan government and the Afghan people, but it hasn't worked out that way. All it did was corrupt the government (as Karzai, his family, and other government officials tucked the money into foreign bank accounts) and make the warlords in that country more powerful (since Karzai gave them some of the money to stay in power -- and keep collecting the cash). The Afghan people got nothing.

An anonymous American official has said, "The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan was the United States." And a former deputy chief of staff for Karzai said, "We called it 'ghost money'. It came in secret, and it left in secret." And to make matters even worse, we now know that Iran was sending Karzai huge and secret amounts of money at the same time -- which our government decried as an attempt to influence the Afghan government (ignoring the fact that we were doing the same thing for the same reason).

I'm not saying we shouldn't have tried to help the Afghan people. After all, we destroyed that country and should have paid to help rebuild it. Sending food, building supplies, educational aids, and even money (with oversight to see it was spent for the good of the people) would have made imminent sense. But dropping off bags full of money at the president's office in secret was a fool's errand, and was destined to fail -- whatever the purpose was.

And there is no evidence that the secret money drop-offs have stopped. While we are cutting aid to hurting Americans (claiming we cannot afford it), we still spend millions paying off corrupt government officials in Afghanistan. Personally, I don't see how such idiotic actions can be defended.