Germany’s military commitment to the NATO mission in Afghanistan is focused almost exclusively on training Afghanistan’s floundering police force, but is having very little success. So little success in fact that General Hans-Christoph Ammon has condemned the training scheme as “a miserable failure.”

General Ammon castigated the German government for spending a paltry 12 million Euros on its training mission, likely around the same as the cost of the 1.7 million pints of beer imported for the German soldiers for last year. At this rate, the General opined, “it would take 82 years to have a properly trained police force” in Afghanistan.

The German government has struggled to maintain popular acceptance for the nation’s participation in the war, with officials publicly referring to slain soldiers only as “casualties” and having officially banned the Defense Ministry from using the word “war” in any of its public statements or speeches.

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