Let's get the Taliban to train the Afghan Army!

This is such a great idea I'm not surprised one of the beltway think-tankers hasn't come up with it.

Instead of having Canada and the other ISAF partners making these ludicrous open-ended committments to "training" the Afghan army, why not let the Taliban take on the job?

After all, they're mostly Afghans, and would therefore be able to avoid all those emarrassing cross-cultural misunderstandings that constantly undermine our training efforts, such as the predeliction the Afghan army officer corps apparently has for sexually explointing pre-teen boys.

Secondly, if one of those recruits snapped and went on a shooting spree, he'd just be taking out a few of their own instead of the far more valuable ISAF members.

Thirdly, we'd save one hell of a pile of money. The tab for training this lot runs into the billions of dollars. The Taliban would be happy to train them for free.

Finally, it just makes good sense to have the winners train the army. The Taliban have fought the most efficient, modern, and technologically advanced military combine in the history of warfare to what a generous observer might concede is a draw.

Why do they need us to train them?

On the down side, I suppose if we went home and left them to their own devices they could no longer be relied on to follow our orders.

"New" Afghan Army costing eight times Afghanistan's annual spending

That little nugget was an aside in a recent New York Times story about contractors in Afghanistan.

Contractors. Have to admit I didn't get the "contractor" thing at the beginning. First time contractors got really big news was when those four guys were hung from the bridge in Falluja.

What the hell, I thought. How barbaric! Why would you want to hang contractors? I know over the years there's been the odd contractor I've had to get a bit pissy with, but hang them from bridges?

Small claims court, maybe. Hanging? No!

Only slowly did I come to the realization that a "contractor" is not a contractor in the conventional sense in which we've understood that word right up until the 21st century.

I thought contractors were electricians and plumbers and framers and drywall guys. Why are they hanging drywall guys from a bridge in Falluja?
Didn't make any sense.

Now I get it of course. "Contractors" is weasel-speak for "mercenaries". Apparently there is a sound business model favoring the use of mercenaries as opposed to your standard US Army troops.

The key word is "business". America is in the process of out-sourcing war to the private sector. And why not? Everybody knows the private sector is more efficient.

According to the Times, there are now more "contractors" in Afghanistan than there are US troops. Every one of them is a profit center. Every one of them is exempt from the rule of law and the laws of war.

And when they die, hey, no big deal, they don't even count as a casualty of war! Talk about a win-win!

Anyway, our private mercenary armies are neck deep in training this new Afghan Army. Training and maintaining this army is costing twelve billion dollars a year.

According to the NYT, every penny of that comes from the American taxpayer.

Something to think about the next time you read a story about Afghan soldiers turning their guns on their American trainers.