Changes

Three weeks after the [[9/11 attacks]], on October 3, 2001, Biden proposed a billion dollars in aid to a yet to be formed Afghan interim government. The amount was almost twice as much as U.N. General Secretary [[Kofi Annan]] proposed and more than triple what the Bush administration asked for.<ref>Sen. Biden: "U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan has issued an appeal for $584 million to meet the needs of the Afghan refugees and displaced people, within Afghanistan and in neighboring countries. This is the amount deemed necessary to stave off disaster for the winter, which will start in Afghanistan in just a few weeks. We must back up our rhetoric with action, with something big and bold and meaningful. We can offer to foot the entire bill for keeping the Afghan people safely fed, clothed, and sheltered this winter, and that should be the beginning....We can kick the effort off in a way that would silence our critics in the rest of the world: a check for $1 billion, and a promise for more to come as long as the rest of the world joins us. This initial amount would be more than enough to meet all the refugees’ short-term needs, and would be a credible downpayment for the long-term effort. Eventually the world community will have to pony up more billions, but there is no avoiding that now, not if we expect our words ever to carry any weight.<br>If anyone thinks this amount of money is too high, let me note one stark, simple and very sad statistic. The damage inflicted by the September 11 attack in economic terms alone was a minimum of several hundred billion dollars and a maximum of over $1 trillion. The cost in human life, of course, as the Presiding Officer knows, is far beyond any calculation. [https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2001-pt13/pdf/CRECB-2001-pt13-issue-2001-10-03.pdf Pg. 18464]</ref>  [[Hamid Karzai]] formed an interim government on 22 December 2001 until elections could be held after the removal of Taliban rule by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces.  On January 10, 2002 Biden arrived in Afghanistan on a four-day fact-finding visit and met with Karzai.<ref>https://www.army.mil/article/50258/biden_meets_karzai_visits_troops_in_afghanistan</ref>  In 2002 and 2003, when Afghan tribal councils gathered to write a new constitution, the U.S. government gave “nice packages” to delegates who supported Washington’s preferred stance. “The perception that was started in that period: If you were going to vote for a position that Washington favored, you’d be stupid to not get a package for doing it,” according to a U.S. official who served in Kabul at the time interviewed by the ''[[Washington Post]]''.<ref>https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-corruption-government/</ref>

Three weeks after the [[9/11 attacks]], on October 3, 2001, Biden proposed a billion dollars in aid to a yet to be formed Afghan interim government. The amount was almost twice as much as U.N. General Secretary [[Kofi Annan]] proposed and more than triple what the Bush administration asked for.<ref>Sen. Biden: "U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan has issued an appeal for $584 million to meet the needs of the Afghan refugees and displaced people, within Afghanistan and in neighboring countries. This is the amount deemed necessary to stave off disaster for the winter, which will start in Afghanistan in just a few weeks. We must back up our rhetoric with action, with something big and bold and meaningful. We can offer to foot the entire bill for keeping the Afghan people safely fed, clothed, and sheltered this winter, and that should be the beginning....We can kick the effort off in a way that would silence our critics in the rest of the world: a check for $1 billion, and a promise for more to come as long as the rest of the world joins us. This initial amount would be more than enough to meet all the refugees’ short-term needs, and would be a credible downpayment for the long-term effort. Eventually the world community will have to pony up more billions, but there is no avoiding that now, not if we expect our words ever to carry any weight.<br>If anyone thinks this amount of money is too high, let me note one stark, simple and very sad statistic. The damage inflicted by the September 11 attack in economic terms alone was a minimum of several hundred billion dollars and a maximum of over $1 trillion. The cost in human life, of course, as the Presiding Officer knows, is far beyond any calculation. [https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2001-pt13/pdf/CRECB-2001-pt13-issue-2001-10-03.pdf Pg. 18464]</ref>  [[Hamid Karzai]] formed an interim government on 22 December 2001 until elections could be held after the removal of Taliban rule by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces.  On January 10, 2002 Biden arrived in Afghanistan on a four-day fact-finding visit and met with Karzai.<ref>https://www.army.mil/article/50258/biden_meets_karzai_visits_troops_in_afghanistan</ref>  In 2002 and 2003, when Afghan tribal councils gathered to write a new constitution, the U.S. government gave “nice packages” to delegates who supported Washington’s preferred stance. “The perception that was started in that period: If you were going to vote for a position that Washington favored, you’d be stupid to not get a package for doing it,” according to a U.S. official who served in Kabul at the time interviewed by the ''[[Washington Post]]''.<ref>https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-corruption-government/</ref>

==Early life==

==Early life==