Financial Transparency Coalition

The U.S. government is not unfamiliar with short-sighted policies, indeed short-sightedness in political systems often seems often more familiar than not. Yet of all the short-sighted policies the United States has engaged in, and especially of those overseas, the recent reports on ghost money in Afghanistan take the cake. I wish I could say I was surprised. According to a report by the New York Times, the Central Intelligence Agency has literally been dropping off “bags of cash” at Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s office for decades. Karzai called the amounts “small,” but evidence indicates the amounts are anything but—perhaps totaling tens...