Not only is your tax money funding the Taliban to an extent which is perhaps even greater than the opium trade; not only is the Pakistani military helping Afghan insurgents attack American troops (again most likely with part of that $1 billion a year we give them); not only is the $50 billion Congress just borrowed to keep the war going making us even poorer; the kicker is it could all be done and won for a teeny tiny fraction of the cost.  In a remarkably subversive piece of journalism for the NYT, Nicholas Kristof lets the cat out of the bag: this military spending is all one big, huge waste.  We could be borrowing that money from China for other things. Today he writes:

Mr. [Greg] Mortenson lamented to me that for the cost of just 246 soldiers posted for one year, America could pay for a higher education plan for all Afghanistan. That would help build an Afghan economy, civil society and future — all for one-quarter of 1 percent of our military spending in Afghanistan this year.

The most important point Kristof makes is that the "development follows security" mantra is all wrong.  This if anything is one of the military's central justification for being there.  The problem is, it's ass-backwards.

Hawks retort that it’s impossible to run schools in Afghanistan unless there are American troops to protect them. But that’s incorrect.  CARE, a humanitarian organization, operates 300 schools in Afghanistan, and not one has been burned by the Taliban. Greg Mortenson, of "Three Cups of Tea" fame, has overseen the building of 145 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan and operates dozens more in tents or rented buildings — and he says that not one has been destroyed by the Taliban either.

The gray pages of the New York Times kicks the reason d'etre of the Military Industrial Complex in Afghanistan all to hell:

Aid groups show that it is quite possible to run schools so long as there is respectful consultation with tribal elders and buy-in from them. And my hunch is that CARE and Mr. Mortenson are doing more to bring peace to Afghanistan than Mr. Obama’s surge of troops.

The roll call of the House vote yesterday to approve the administration's request for $50 billion more in war funding is HERE (a "yea" is in favor of more funds for the war.)  Campaign contributions to congressmen from defense corporations are HERE.  And is HERE is how you contact your congressmen to let them know what you think.  If I'm going to borrow money from China (I'd rather not) it would be to go back to school.

Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.

Earlier this week, we highlighted Nicholas Kristof's OP-ED in the New York Times about Gabon, a country in West-Central Africa where the rights of farmers are frequently in conflict with wildlife conservation efforts. One young village chief and farmer, Evelyn Kinga explained that she doesn't like elephants because they eat her cassava plants-a crop her livelihood depends on-because she doesn't benefit from rich foreigners who come to Gabon for eco-tourism.

But it doesn't have to be this way, says Raol du Toit, Director of the Rhino Conservation Trust in Zimbabwe. His organization works closely with farmers on the ground to help communities realize that protecting wildlife can be in their own best interest.

du Toit promotes "landscape-level planning" that takes into account the needs of wildlife, the environment, and farming communities. Rather than relying on development agencies and governments to decide where cattle fences should go or where farmers should plant their crops, local communities and stakeholders need to be part of the process. Development aid, says du Toit, should follow what local stakeholders need and perceive, not the other way around. Additionally, the Rhino Conservation Trust provides classroom materials for schools so that students may learn the connections between sustainable agriculture and wildlife conservation at an early age. (See also Helping Farmers Benefit Economically from Wildlife Conservation)

And du Toit is not alone in his effort to improve the lives of farmers, as well as protect wildlife.

In Tanzania, the Jane Goodall Instutite (JGI) started as a center to research and protect wild chimpanzee populations in what is now, thanks to their efforts, Gombe National Park. But by the early 1990's the organization realized that in order to be successful it would have to start addressing the needs of the communities surrounding the park. JGI was planting trees to rebuild the forest but members of the community were chopping them down-not because they wanted to damage the work but because they needed them for fuel and to make charcoal.

In response, JGI started working with communities to develop government- mandated land use plans, helping them develop soil erosion prevention practices, agroforestry, and production of value-added products, such as coffee and palm oil. "These are services," says Pancras Ngalason Executive Director of JGI Tanzania, "people require in order to appreciate the environment" and that will ultimately help not only protect the chimps and other wildlife, but also to build healthy and economically viable communities. (See also: Rebuilding Roots in Environmental Education)

In Botswana, the Mokolodi Wildlife Reserve is doing more than just teaching students and the community about conserving and protecting wildlife and the environment, they're also educating students about permaculture. By growing indigenous vegetables, recycling water for irrigation, and using organic fertilizers-including elephant dung-the Reserve's Education Center is demonstrating how to grow nutritious food with very little water or chemical inputs.

When school groups come to learn about the animals, the reserve also teaches them about sustainable agriculture. Using the garden as a classroom in which to teach students about composting, intercropping, water harvesting, and organic agriculture practices, the Wildlife Reserve helps draw the connection between the importance of environmentally sustainable agriculture practices and the conservation of elephants, giraffes, impala, and various other animals and birds living in the area.(See also: Cultivating an Interest in Agriculture Conservation)

To read more about innovative ways to protect agriculture and the surrounding wildlife, read: From Alligator to Zebra: Wild Animals Find Sanctuary in the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Kigoma, Tanzania, Protecting Wildlife While Improving Food Security, Health, and Livelihoods, Helping Conserve Wildlife-and Agriculture-in Mozambique,  Honoring the Farmers that Nourish their Communities and the Planet, and Investing in Projects that Protect Both Agriculture and Wildlife

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I was surprised to see Ezra Klein endorse Nicholas Kristof's column arguing that "the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don't exploit enough." Back in my college Macroeconomics class, this argument was expressed as "They're not poor because they work in sweatshops.  They work in sweatshops because they're poor."

Well actually, they're poor because they don't make enough money to support themselves.  If the people who hire them paid them enough, they would not be poor.  Providing jobs to people who would rather work them than stay unemployed doesn't release whoever provides the job from responsibility for how they treat them, just as saving someone from drowning would not give me any more right to mug that person than I have to mug anyone else.

The Postreported in 2005 that National Labor Committee Head Charles Kernaghan

gets angry when he recalls what a worker told him in Bangladesh: "If we could earn 37 cents an hour, we could live with a little dignity." (As opposed to the 21-cent hourly wage that barely staved off starvation.)

As CAPAF's Sabina Dawan observes, it's not as though the International Labor Organization and allied groups working to close such gaps and to see basic human rights protected in plants that make Western companies so rich are out to drive the people of Cambodia out of their jobs - or as though that's the inevitable result of letting workers go to the bathroom, or leave work to give birth.  Does Kristof believe that the Bangladeshi worker Kernaghan references makes 21 cents an hour because at 22 cents his plant would stop making a profit?

As Richard Rothstein wrote in his rejoinder to Kristof:

There's more...

As far as I'm concerned, anything Nick Kristof writes is required reading. I can hardly say the same for the increasingly self-important Thomas "Six Months" Friedman, but today's column reminds us how he got his cushy gig in the first place.

Kristof's "A Prison of Shame, and It's Ours" chronicles the stories of several innocent people locked up in Guantanamo Bay, providing a compelling argument for why we need to close the place yesterday:

Mahvish Rukhsana Khan, an American woman of Afghan descent who worked as an interpreter, has written a book to be published next month, "My Guantánamo Diary," that is wrenching to read. She describes a pediatrician who returned to Afghanistan in 2003 to help rebuild his country -- and was then arrested by Americans, beaten, doused with icy water and paraded around naked. Finally, after three years, officials apparently decided he was innocent and sent him home...

The new material suggests two essential truths about Guantánamo:

First, most of the inmates were probably innocent all along, but Pakistanis or Afghans turned them over to America in exchange for large cash rewards. The moment we offered $25,000 rewards for Al Qaeda supporters, any Arab in the region risked being kidnapped and turned over as a terrorism suspect.

Second, torture was routine, especially early on. That's why more than 100 prisoners have died in American custody in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo...

When I started writing about Guantánamo several years ago, I thought the inmates might be lying and the Pentagon telling the truth. No doubt some inmates lie, and some surely are terrorists. But over time -- and it's painful to write this -- I've found the inmates to be more credible than American officials.

Both Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates have pushed to shut down Guantánamo because it undermines America's standing and influence. They have been overruled by Dick Cheney and other hard-liners. In reality, it would take an exceptional enemy to damage America's image and interests as much as President Bush and Mr. Cheney already have with Guantánamo.

January 20 can't come soon enough. 261 days left...

In "Who Will Tell the People?", Friedman looks at America's crumbling power and economy, and suggests that it will take bold leadership and vision to restore us to our previous heights.

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents' generation -- work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means -- have given way to subprime values: "You can have the American dream -- a house -- with no money down and no payments for two years."...

A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York's Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.'s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore's ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children's play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin's luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it's because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world's best talent -- including Americans.

Caution: Friedman ends with some harsh but brief words for the Clinton campaign, and similarly brief praise for Barack Obama's rhetoric. That's hardly why I recommend the article, but don't say I didn't warn you.

I leave you with this third insightful commentary, Friday's "Get Fuzzy" courtesy the funny papers.

There's more...

Nicholas Kristof in todays' NYT  writes in study after study, and from expert after expert:

We can make categorization by race go away, but we could never make gender categorization go away.

He goes on to explain that John Tooby, a scholar at the University of California at Santa Barbara ran an experiment in which researchers put blacks and whites in sports jerseys as if they belonged to two basketball teams. People looking at the photos logged the players in their memories more by team than by race, recalling a player's jersey color but not necessarily his or her race.

But only very rarely did people forget whether a player was male or female.

Amazing information. And certainly pertinent to the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to be the Democratic party's nominee for President. But Kristof, an often shrill manipulator of public opinion, did not lead with that information,

Rather he declares he is a racist because by .013 degrees of a second, he shot armed blacks more quickly than armed whites in a University of chicago online psych test.

So even when sexism is shown to be more durable and more salient than race, it will not be reported accurately

There's more...