NATO's Afghan Mission Reduced to Bean-Counting

NATO is going to keep thousands of personnel in Afghanistan post-2014 but the only fighting they'll do will be to try to keep their Afghan counterparts from pilfering the ongoing 4 billion dollars a year in military aid.

Basically we're going to defend our money against our allies.  Sounds like a great way to go to war, doesn't it?

Any enduring NATO military presence in Afghanistan “is tied directly to the $4.1 billion and our ability to oversee it and account for it,” a senior NATO diplomat said. “You need enough troops to responsibly administer, oversee and account for $4 billion a year of security assistance.”

Western military commanders fear that, left to their own devices, Afghans could raid that funding which, in turn, might lead Western governments to simply cancel the funding altogether, leaving Afghanistan's floundering military totally screwed.

Helluva way to fight a war.