I horrid situation is developing in Afghanistan over food. Today I read that Biden has decided to funnel some of the funds to 9-11 first responders families, including their legal expenses and not let the (now-Taliban) government use it. (Note there is no guarantee they would spend it on food, they might not, for that reason I (and it seems the 9-11 families group) think the money, should be spent on food . IMHO foods packaging should clearly indicate that it is not to be sold, of course that - when done never prevents it) Still, I hate the idea of the afghani people being in the middle in this dispute between the US and their extremist government, which was not elected by them. And its not their fault, its the big powers fault for flooding the country with weapons for so long. The Taliban are thugs, no more legitimate than any government that rules by force.

Putting myself in the position of the now starving Afghani people I think that the best idea is food aid. Perhaps even food aid dropped in by parachute. So the government could not sell it. If its a situation similar to the one in North Korea where the government takes food aid and funnels it to high-songbun (songbun is a hereditary caste-like ranking of individual families and peoples loyalty to the ruling Kim family which excludes 2/3 of the country from scarce resources like education, healthcare and food. ) Particularly favored are the insider North Koreans in the showcase city, Pyongyang, who are also the ones favored by their public distribution system and the government in Pyongyang funnels the food to insiders and excludes entire provinces from receiving any of it.

(Its a lot like the book "The Hunger Games, former North Koreans say) Its conceivable that the Taliban government might funnel food first to areas where they had the most supporters, its hard to say.

Importing basic foodstuff like rice and beans will lower the cost of food and hopefully make it more available to the long suffering Afghanis. Whose country has been occupied by foreign superpowers for many decades.

For the record, I think the US legal system and its "loser pays" system is an abomination. I also think that it would be wrong for the government of Afhanistan's money to be taken to pay US lawyers of former New York City employees, Which tried to get away with not paying their huge medical expenses after the EPA had lied to the people of New York City telling them the 9-011 aftermath was safe, when it was remarkably unsafe.

That was 20 years ago. Right now poor people in Afghanistan are starving. When children die, they dont get a second chance at life.

I think this is a touchy situation where the Biblical adage to treat my brother as I would myself really applies.

At the same time, I feel that the one thing that it is legitimate to spend that money on is food, basic foodstuffs.

I am not even certain that it was established that the Taliban were involved in the 9-11 terror incident. It was well known that the Bush family was closely involved in a number of ways with the Bin Laden family also. What I am getting at is that starvation matters. People living by eating today in order to have a tomorrow matters.

Biden is an angry old man, who wants to shrug off any possible culpability of the US in Afghanistan's problems. That argument doesn't impress me as wholly true given the fact that the US wants Afghanistan's oil and gas to develop. As did the UK and probably also Russia before us. . Biden is not a mother trying to keep an infant child alive.

Get my point?