al-Qaeda’s not got as much cash as it used to, according to the US Treasury.
Several fundraising appeals have been made this year. The Taliban’s apparently doing better, mainly because they have direct access to the narcotics trade.
What isn’t mentioned in the Treasury report, of course, are the trillions of dollars being spent by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan to rid the planet of these very small time outfits. So far, all that cash hasn’t had much effect on either al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
You don’t need much money to unleash havoc, as we know from our experiences in Goingbackwardville. 9/11 likely cost less than a million dollars to plan and execute. The Madrid and London bombings cost a few thousand each.
One might conclude therefore that it’s a waste of time and resources for the Pentagon to be leading the anti-terror campaign, when economic development in backward lands, combined with better law enforcement and intelligence gathering at home and abroad, could do the job at least as ineffectively for far less moolah.
But that’s not a debate anyone in Movingforwardville wants to have, much better for the Treasury to claim they’ve succeeded in reducing financial resources for insurgent and terrorist groups. Victory is mine, sayeth the Geithner!
Gorilla says: “If only we’d gotten Wells Fargo to do Option ARMS in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we’d have wiped these guys out by now!”
