This isn't the first time I've linked to Pat Buchanan's magazine, and anyone who has heard him on MSNBC knows he's opposed to the war in Afghanistan.
But in a time when the GOP is trying to pin our exploding deficits on teachers and cops, it's still refreshing to hear a conservative voice pointing out the obvious. Note, this is actually Tom Engelhardt's words posted by amconmag.com:
After all, according to the Pentagon, the cost of the Afghan War in 2012 will be almost $300 million a day or, for all 365 of them, $107.3 billion. Like anything having to do with American war-fighting, however, such figures regularly turn out to be undercounts. Other estimates for our yearly war costs there go as high as $120-$160 billion.
And let’s face it, it’s a war worth ending fast. Almost a decade after the Bush administration invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. military is still fruitlessly engaged in possibly the stupidest frontier war in our history, thousands of miles from home in the backlands of the planet. It’s just the sort of dumb conflict that has, historically, tended to drive declining imperial powers around the bend, just the sort — in the very same country — that helped do in the Soviet Union. And though news from that war remains remarkably grim, were we by some miracle to win, for hundreds of billions of dollars we would have gained tenuous control over the fifth poorest, second most corrupt, and premier narco-state on the planet. Al-Qaeda, on the other hand, would undoubtedly still be happily ensconced in the Pakistani tribal border areas with a range of superbly failed states available elsewhere for exploitation.
Source: amconmag.com repost of tomdispatch.com
Between Iraq and Afghanistan we have already spent over one trillion dollars. Yet the GOP would rather defund Obama's TelePrompTer than go after the real money pit.
And knowing they won't, the next suggestion is to stop training the Afghan military and police:
What if, instead, we went cold turkey on our obsession with training Afghans? For one thing, you’d promptly wipe out more than a quarter of that $40 billion the House leadership wants cut and many more billions for years to come. (And that doesn’t even take into account all the saveable American dollars going down the tubes in Afghanistan — a recent report from the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction suggested it adds up to $12 billion for the Afghan Army alone — in graft, corruption, and pure incompetence.)
Think about it this way: Are we actually safer if we get rid of police, firefighters, and teachers here in the U.S., while essentially hiring hordes of police and military personnel to secure Afghanistan? I suspect you know how most Americans would answer that question.
Good question. And I do know how most Americans would answer it.
Updated by John H at Fri Feb 18, 2011, 03:37:05 PM
Thanks to kimoconnor for noting this was actually a blog post by Tom Engelhardt at tomdispatch.com. I have amended the diary to add attribution to his site, but since it was reposted on amconmag.com I will leave the bulk of the diary as is.