I know you love to pay taxes! Almost as much fun as watching the value of the dollar fall as deficits soar and Congress extends tax reductions for the rich. Weeeeeeeee! And we are soooo clearly not winning in that field of combat. While we may enjoy momentary triumph's against entrenched Taliban forces, our inability to leave sufficient forces behind every time we clear a region of sufficient Taliban operatives leaves the locals very much in doubt as to the value of NATO forces in that worn-torn nation. A new poll of Afghan locals "conducted by The Washington Post, ABC News, the British Broadcasting Corp. and ARD television of Germany [… provides the following general results:] Nationwide, more than half of Afghans interviewed said U.S. and NATO forces should begin to leave the country in mid-2011 or earlier. More Afghans than a year ago see the United States as playing a negative role in Afghanistan, and support for President Obama's troop surge has faded. A year ago, 61 percent of Afghans supported the deployment of 30,000 additional U.S. troops. In the new poll, 49 percent support the move, with 49 percent opposed." Washington Post (December 6th).
And it's not like the locals are the only ones expressing doubt about the likelihood of NATO success in Afghanistan. "Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said he doubts the Taliban will be defeated before NATO troops are withdrawn in 2014… 'I don't think there are any sure things in this kind of endeavor, and I wouldn't be honest with you and with the viewers if I didn't convey that,' Petraeus told ABC commentator George Stephanopoulos in an interview broadcast today on "Good Morning America." AOLNews.com (December 6th).
Since our conflict in Afghanistan began in 2001, we've spent roughly $360 billion in that military effort (according to costofwar.com), but with recent troop increases, our monthly Afghan war costs have risen from $5.5 billion to $6.7 billion (USA Today, May 12th). At a time when we are facing massive budget deficits, you'd think we'd pay attention to locals who want us gone and listen to our most senior military advisors who are glowing with a strong lack of confidence at the likelihood that all this will be remotely worth the cost – in money and human lives.
Still, no one in the Obama administration, or even in the Republican opposition, seems to be looking at this obvious waste of taxpayer money: "'I don’t think anyone is seriously talking about cutting war funding as a way of handling the deficit,' says Todd Harrison, a defense funding expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. But higher war costs 'could hurt the base defense budget [and] the rest of the discretionary budget.'… So how much extra would it cost if the bulk of the withdrawal starts rather than finishes around 2014? About $125 billion, says Mr. Harrison at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, at that's just through 2014. He uses two different troop level scenarios – one high, and one low. He calculates costs based $1.1 million per soldier per year, which reflects the five-year average in Afghanistan.
"The lower cost – $288 billion – assumes that the troops involved in Obama’s surge would be withdrawn by 2012, and that by the end of 2014 only 30,000 US troops would remain. The higher cost – $413 billion – assumes no drawdown will happen until 2013, and 70,000 US troops would remain by the end of 2014. The difference: $125 billion." CSMonitor.com (November 19th). 70% of the NATO military forces are American, as are the vast majority of civilian contractors are signed with the U.S. Department of Defense: 112,000 according to an October 7th report from the Carnegie Council. It would not be unfair to assess a 90% cost factor to U.S. involvement in the Afghan theater, so about $371 billion of the above $413 can easily be allocated to U.S. taxpayers. It's time to take a good look around our nation, at struggling school systems, states being destroyed by unmanageable debt, decaying infrastructure, a massive federal deficit and unraveling governmental programs… and re-prioritize where we put our precious tax dollars.
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