Afghanistan: Our Most Costly War Goes On
Afghanistan: Our Most Costly War Goes On
By Todd Strandberg
The liberal media have trained themselves to exploit any misstep or inconsistency that President Trump makes. When he announced his plan to continue the Afghanistan war, it’s very strange and ominous that the press gave little coverage to President Trump’s previous twitter comments on the subject:
“It is time to get out of Afghanistan. We are building roads and schools for people that hate us. It is not in our national interests.” (February 27, 2012)
“Afghanistan is a total disaster. We don’t know what we are doing. They are, in addition to everything else, robbing us blind.” (March 12, 2012)
“We should leave Afghanistan immediately. No more wasted lives. If we have to go back in, we go in hard and quick. Rebuild the U.S. first.” (March 1, 2013)
President Trump freely admitted that he has changed his mind about our involvement in Afghanistan. The war will go on, but our focus will be on killing terrorists and not nation building. He promised to pressure Pakistan to crack down on terrorist cells along its border with Afghanistan. He called on the Afghan government to rein in corruption. President Trump also wants India to become more involved in the situation.
The war in Afghanistan is America’s longest military conflict. Unlike earlier wars, most American families don’t feel impacted by the Afghanistan War. Unlike the Vietnam War and World War II, there has not been a draft, and no ration cards have been issued for goods and services. There has not been a special tax imposed to pay for the war.
The 2,400 death toll from the Afghanistan War is very low. In the Civil War and World War II we lost half million people in each conflict. Our losses in Afghanistan are so light, every time a soldier dies his or her name is reported in the national news.
The problem I have with Afghanistan war is this: money. War is an expensive endeavor, and a military campaign cannot be sustained without bleeding a nation dry. The Cost of Wars Project at Brown University has estimated that total war spending in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001 is approaching $5 trillion. Of that, roughly $2 trillion is attributable to Afghanistan. This massive price tag will only keep rising, as President Trump has now vowed to increase troop levels in Afghanistan.
The cost of this Afghanistan War doesn’t include future spending that will be needed for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Because of the advances in medical science, we have been able to save soldiers who lost their limbs or have suffered profound brain injuries. The cost related to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans over the next 40 years will be more than $1 trillion.
The government can only think in the short term, so budget planners have no grasp of the long term cost of an endless war. Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government said, “The cost of caring for war veterans typically peaks 30 to 40 years or more after a conflict.” But we are already at the point where we face a financial crisis every three or four months—which shows how much financial peril we are in.
World War II, in inflation-adjusted dollars cost $4.1 trillion. In the 1940s people were willing to pay that high price tag because they deemed it necessary to save the world from the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. I don’t think our investment in Iraq and Afghanistan has been worth $5 trillion. After we pulled out of Iraq, the military that we had painstakingly built-up collapsed in spectacular fashion, and ISIS used “our weapons” to completely destroy dozens of cities.
Afghanistan has been a hopeless cause for any empire trying to colonize or tame it. The British and the Soviet Union tried and failed to subjugate that land of warring tribes. Our wishful goal of just making Afghanistan a peaceful place is delusional.
Our relationship with Afghanistan is so disorganized; we don’t even have an ambassador to Kabul. A good reason why that post is empty is because every single year there has been at least one major attack against a Western embassy. Our troops operate from behind fortified compounds because the natives hate us.
I have to wonder if the reason why America is not clearly mentioned in Bible prophecy is because we will implode under the financial weight of our vast military complex. It might not be Afghanistan that breaks us, but someday the dollar is going to collapse and the reformed Roman Empire may just step in to take our place.
“After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things” (Daniel 7:7-8).
–Todd