Afghanistan and Iraq are utter wrecks. Sure, it’s exciting to go to war and take out the bad guys – it’s hard to argue that the Taliban or Saddam deserved to stay in power – but what about the more important job of putting these nations back together? What that takes is money, and the United States has simply been unwilling to give what it takes.

The Bush administration may dislike the United Nations because it’s cumbersome and doesn’t always let us win, but it sure comes in handy when you don’t want to cough up the cash. U.N. support means that Norway and Japan will help foot the bill – countries with foreign aid budgets that far outstrip ours based on percentage of GNP. No U.N. support means that the desperate, war-shattered peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq have to hold out their hands to a man who never had to scrape together gas money a day in his life.

Our economy may be in the dumps, but their economies have all but ceased to exist. And the nation that purports to represent freedom and the glory of capitalism can’t scrape up enough cash to do right by those who have suffered as we wage war on the world.