During the campaign, Barack Obama put a high priority on foreign aid. But Al Kamen notes today that
six months into the Obama administration, the Agency for International Development, though deeply troubled and adrift, now finds itself without a single top job filled by an Obama appointee. This is not a question of a couple of senior folks being "home alone." We're talking a virtual haunted house.
Perhaps that's one reason why the vaunted "civilian surge" in Afghanistan has been painfully slow to materialize.
--Michael Crowley