No prisons in Afghanistan. How about jobs and a little more creativity instead?

The New York Times reports this morning that our government wants to build a "super prison"

in Afghanistan because the Afghan government does not have the ability, apparently, to incarcerate their own criminals. Well, we certainly have a lot of experience and expertise building prisons. So, I guess on one level that makes sense - but only if you are a prison builder who stands to gain from the opportunity. The rest of us would like to understand a few things first.

Memo to our government: have you considered first providing job programs (obviously we have, but $1 billion is hardly a drop in the bucket and is equivalent to 3 Raptor Jets if anyone is paying attention), training, or even promoting television programs and radio programs focused on entrepreneurs in Afghanistan? How have you first creatively celebrated and promoted the "doers" versus used our great power and our money to punish the "takers?" My God, I sincerely hope our government has more creative range. Where did the visionaries from the days of the Marshall Plan go? Are they all tools now of our military industrial personality complex? Or, is the last bastion of creative thinking only reserved for certain floors of buildings in the financial district of New York?

Seriously.

Surely John McCain has more sense than to endorse such an idea. We build more prisons in this country and house more prisoners than any democratic nation in the world per capita. We do this in an arrogant and ass-backward belief that building more prisons deters more crime. It doesn't.

Statistics repeatedly show that if we provide proper early education for children, vocational training and support systems for teens moving in to adulthood and programs designed to help reduce criminal recidivism, society saves seven dollars for every one we spend in terms of the future costs of housing any individual as a prisoner, managing parole programs and paying for law enforcement. It's called an investment strategy - a type of activity that we pay trillions of dollars for to train and educate our most villainous and, yes, celebrated financial whizzes on Wall Street.

Our society has an investment mentality when it comes to wealth and opportunity. When it comes to people, we have a split personality. We'd rather pay through the nose for secret government programs designed to kill people all in the name of national defense, than carve off a few more dollars for an intelligent investment strategy to educate, train and prepare our children for the future in an increasingly complicated world.

Granted, we live in a land of opportunity and choice. If one chooses a negative path, the punishments can be severe - apparently not so severe that it keeps about 1 out of 100 of us in a federal or state prison. Anyone who reads the Fatal Shore will tell you that mental illness, poverty and hopelessness are the root causes of crime (in almost all cases but a few). Oh, and if you'll permit a little woo woo thinking - the lack of love in one's life.

Think about it.

When it comes to paying a few more dollars in taxes to give our children the finest education money can buy, we're more comfortable blaming teachers and the teacher's unions for being greedy. I have a question born from an admittedly old chivalrous piece of my rapidly shriveling Y chromosome: What kind of coward do you have to be beat up on a teacher?

Are we so lost that we don't give a wit of thought to the notion that each one of us blithely pays for bombs, guns and bullets to kill people at a rate never seen in human history all in the name of "keeping democracy safe" but we can't seem to realize that the best long-term "weapon" we can send out into the world is a well-educated, culturally-astute, intelligent, citizen. Bombs and guns and bullets are nothing when compared to that kind of power.

So, can we consider - please - this idea of building a prison in Afghanistan and consider first how to help the Afghan children envision a better life for themselves through more hopeful means than a concrete prison wall? Apparently the Afghan landscape is dotted with the crumbling walls of past efforts to punish the wicked rather than focusing on rewarding the just. Could there be a more stark reminder of what history is telling us?

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Let's Respond to Putin, Not React

Speaking at the Munich Conference on Security Policy today, Russian President, Valdimir Putin, apparently got the news media in a lather. Unfortunately, as I write this Putin's speech is not available in English; only Russian. Certainly, we must pay very close attention to even the slightest nuance of negativity from the Russian President. But, I think in this case the media is over-reacting.

The tagline of the conference is Peace through Dialogue. It was an appropriate place to provoke an intense discussion. You can read what stirred everyone here. I can understand what the fuss is about, but I urge us all to listen in this case and keep our mouth's shut for a moment. This goes for you Senator's McCain and Lieberman.

According to the BBC (light years ahead of CNN and most everyone else as usual), Mr Putin's spokesman Dimitry Peskov said the speech was "not about confrontation, it's an invitation to think." And think we should. President Putin's ruminations on American policy is something we should all be turning a keen ear to. For example, I can imagine why Russia would be concerned with our intentions and our actions. I am not convinced that the world is safer. Is anyone? If so, then that's another subject to debate at another time. I am only speaking for myself now. I don't feel safer since 9/11. Why should the Russians?

In an interview with National Interest, Peskov had this to say about one of our arch-enemies, Iran, "We are the last country in this world that would want to have a nuclear weapon at its southern borders. Let’s not forget that the problem of a potentially nuclear Iran is much more vivid for us than for some other remote countries." It seems pretty obvious that the regions closest to Russia are not stable. Of course, many have never been.

The brinksmanship between Washington and Tehran has done nothing to calm Russian nerves, apparently. If we listen carefully, Russia's president may be asking us to be the "bigger man" here and stop the threats we are lobbing in Iran's direction. Our brothers in Israel should also button it. Anyone who is watching closely can see that Iran is blowing smoke. If I were Iran, I'd be doing the same thing. With America staring coldy in my direction twirling a pistol, what do any of us expect?

Because we don't have a translation of the speech, we don't know right now what other nuanced issues Mr. Putin raised. Even if he did not mention the other key reasons for global instability like poverty, illiteracy and global communications making the gulf between the haves and have nots seem wider than at any point in history, the speech should be judged in total.

Mr. Putin, apparently the Western media is spoiling to spark a debate. They are right to do this. The floor is now yours again. Some of us are going to do the best way can to listen to what you have to say. If you aren't focusing some of your energy on other issues out of American control, we may not be so eager to listen next time. I'll keep an open mind in the meantime.