America Faces Permanent Unemployment SOMEWHERE IN AFGHANISTAN–It has been two years since the U.S. economy, once the envy of the world, drew its last breath. Millions of homeowners have gotten evicted. Unemployment has soared to Great Depression-era levels. Yet, aside from the witless “take America back” rants of the Tea Party crazies, things are calm. Remarkably so, when you consider the misery and rage that is tearing families apart. The explanation: unemployment benefits. By the time I got laid off as an editor in April 2009, Congress and the Obama Administration had extended checks for the jobless to a record 99 weeks. Another extension was approved in July. The money isn’t great. In New York, you get $405 a week plus $25 “Obama bucks” per week. But it’s enough to make a difference. If you hustle a little–odd jobs paid in cash, off the books, for example–unemployment makes it possible for many of the 20 percent-plus of Americans who lost…

If the U.S. Can’t Help Afghanistan, Who Can? DO AB, AFGHANISTAN–Afghanistan has more infrastructure than it did in 2001. But Afghans also have less soul. In many ways, Afghanistan was a more dangerous country nine years ago. There were more mines, more random acts of violence, warlordism everywhere. U.S. warplanes were bombing everything that moved. But, particularly in the Tajik-dominated north, there was also boundless optimism, a feeling that anything was possible. Good times might not be right around the corner–not exactly. But soon. If anyone could fix Afghanistan, people thought, the United States could. The superpower colossus! A nation so rich that Afghans couldn’t begin to measure, much less really understand it. Rebuilding Afghanistan from the ground up would be chump change for mighty America. The U.S. media did nothing to temper Afghan optimism. An October 2001 piece for Slate was typical: “Terrorism, the most ardent proponents of intervention argue, can’t be defeated without a complete reconstruction of Afghanistan’s…

Nine Years Later, Afghanistan Looks Much the Same: A Mess HERAT, AFGHANISTAN–OK. The roads are impressive. Specifically, the fact that they exist. When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, more than two decades of civil conflict had left the country bereft of basic infrastructure. Roads, bridges and tunnels had been bombed and mined. What didn’t blow up got ground down by tanks. Maintenance? Don’t be funny. It took them too long to get started, but U.S. occupation forces deserve credit for slapping down asphalt. Brutal, bone-crushing ordeals that used to take four days can be measured in smooth, endless-grey-ribboned hours. Bridges have been replaced. Tunnels have been shored up. Most major highways and major city streets have been paved. But that’s about it. As of 2008 the U.S. claimed to have spent $1.3 billion on construction projects in Afghanistan. Where’d it all go? Roads don’t cost that much. That’s the Big Question here. As far as anyone can tell, the…

Please Spare Me the Hypocritical Obituaries SOMEWHERE IN NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN—I am researching a book, a follow-up to “To Afghanistan and Back,” which in 2002 became the first book published about the U.S. invasion. Accompanied by fellow cartoonists Matt Bors and Steven Cloud, I am traveling from Kunduz to Heart via Mazar-i-Sharif and Mainana. By the time you read this, I should be about to turn south toward Zaranj, on the Iranian border. Nimruz province is a challenging August vacation destination: lows in the 100s, highs in the 130s, scorpions and sporadic insurgent attacks at no extra cost. But political commentators have a duty to check things out for themselves. Sadly the U.S. doesn’t invade places like France and Italy anymore. I could die. I probably won’t. Thousands of Americans and other Westerners go to Afghanistan every year. Only a few get killed. But it is a dangerous place. The roads are awful. There are bandits. Everyone has guns. I’ve been…

In a Deteriorating Afghanistan, a New Breed of Terror KABUL–“In squads of roaring dirt bikes and armed to the teeth,” Joshua Partlow reports in The Washington Post, “Taliban fighters are spreading like a brush fire into remote and defenseless villages across northern Afghanistan.” Two other cartoonists and I were a day away from heading to Faryab–a remote, rural, Uzbek-dominated province in the northwest known for its brutally entertaining matches of buzkashi–when Partlow’s piece appeared. He described a phenomenon that deploys novel tactics out of a bizarre 1970s action flick. It was years after the 2001 U.S. invasion before the Afghan national police began to take control of the country’s major highways. Now there are government-run gun nests every few kilometers. Insurgents have responded to government control of the highways by basing themselves in rugged villages far away from the freshly-paved asphalt. Riding Pamir motorcycles supplied by Pakistani intelligence–thus paid for by American taxpayers–Taliban bike gangs swoop across the desert, taking…

Nine Years Later, Afghan City is Buzzing But Still Menacing TALOQAN, AFGHANISTAN–Nine years ago, when I was using this provincial Afghan capital as a base to cover the battle of Kunduz, Taloqan was a dangerous place with medieval charm. Donkey carts and horse-drawn carriages, their steeds decked out with red pom-poms, plied muddy ruts that passed as roads. The only motorized transport belonged to Western NGOs. Commerce consisted of a few sad huts you’d recognize as primitive convenience stores and an outdoor bazaar where 90 percent of economic activity was attributable to sales of opium paste. In 2001 I wrote that good roads would change everything. And they have. Some time after 2005, when The New York Times reported that the U.S. hadn’t laid an inch of pavement in the entire country, road building happened–at least here in Takhar and in neighboring Kunduz province. It’s impressive. Based on my 2001 experience and the absence of media reports that anything had…

Chase Bank and Obama’s “Make Home Affordable” Scam SOMEWHERE IN AFGHANISTAN—It isn’t surprising, what with the world falling apart and all, that the world scarcely noticed that I lost my job as an editor in April 2009. Why should it? I was one of millions of Americans who lost their job that month. But it mattered to me. It wasn’t all bad. No more early morning commutes. And no more Lisa. Lisa was my boss. My mean boss. My mean and crazy boss. In the long run, I stand to save thousands of dollars on therapy. In the meantime, however, one visit with HR cost more than half my annual income. (My ex-employer, the Scripps media conglomerate, offered just four weeks severance pay—if I agreed not to work as a journalist for the rest of my life. Needless to say, I refused.) Just like that, I was broke. The bills, of course, kept coming. Including my home mortgage. Unlike many…

It’s the Economics, [REDACTED] SOMEWHERE IN AFGHANISTAN—Two months ago long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas got fired by her employer, the Hearst newspaper conglomerate, in response to her off-the-cuff slam at Israel. I criticized the firing on free speech grounds. “Free speech must be defended no matter what—even that of cranky anti-Semitic columnists (if that’s what Thomas is/was),” I wrote. “Unless we are truly free to say what we think—without fear of reprisal—free speech is not a right. It is merely a permission.” I received many letters in response. Most people disagreed with me. A letter from Joseph Just was typical, but better written than most (which is why I quote it here): “Ms. Thomas has been denied not one of her constitutional rights. She faces no fine, legal censure or criminal charges for saying what she said. Her immunity from the threat of such sanction (rather than immunity from being, shall we say, ‘asked to resign’) is what the…

Thanks to WikiLeaker, Afghan War Will End Soon MUMBAI–“An appalling irresponsible act.” That’s how General James Nattis, fresh at the helm of U.S. Central Command, characterizes the release of more than 76,000 classified Pentagon reports released by the website WikiLeaks. You may recall that the Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense, is the same outfit that loaded $24 billion in $100 bills onto shrinkwrapped pallets and loaded the cash onto C-130 transport planes bound for Iraq–guarded by enlisted men who earn $20,000 a year. Not one of those Benjamins has ever heard from since. Which, given that the money was supposed to be paid to corrupt tribal sheikhs, is just as well. Don’t be surprised if you see contractors installing one of those great a new Gunnite pool at the house belonging to your recently discharged veteran neighbor. So anyway, when a Pentagon biggie calls someone irresponsible, take them seriously. These guys know from irresponsibility. Speaking of behavior that…