With all the attention being given to the economy and the government's fiscal situation, it is important not to forget the budgetary implications of the Afgan war.
To put it simply the numbers do not make any sense.
From the NYT today we have the following:High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War
While President Obama’s decision about sending more troops to Afghanistan is primarily a military one, it also has substantial budget implications that are adding pressure to limit the commitment, senior administration officials say.
The latest internal government estimates place the cost of adding 40,000 American troops and sharply expanding the Afghan security forces, as favored by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and allied commander in Afghanistan, at $40 billion to $54 billion a year, the officials said.
Even if fewer troops are sent, or their mission is modified, the rough formula used by the White House, of about $1 million per soldier per year, appears almost constant.
Let's step back for a second and consider what we are talking about - an ADDITIONAL $40-54 billion dollars to fight a war in a country barely in the third world.
> The population of Afghanistan is only about 28,000,000
> More than 50% of the people are under the age of 18
> 30% of the population is under 10!
> There are less than 14 million adults in the country!
If you do a little math, the ANNUAL spending on the new troops works out at about $1,500 per person (including the children).
So what? Well the per capita GDP off Afghanistan is only $457. So the US will, just on the "escalation", spend more than 3 times the GDP of Afghanistan! Does no one else see a scale problem here?
Here's a proposal: For the next 5 years the US agrees to give every Afghani $1,000 as long as there are no terrorist attacks on the US! Save $20 billion (plus all the other money being spent there), and have peace.
A few more points on the Afghan economy -
> total exports are only $2 billion (1/20th of what the US wants to spend in addition to current spending). (I assume they leave out the heroin)
> total government revenues are only $798 million - or not enough to pay for even 1,000 US troops for a year!
And of course the money already being spent is being spent so well:
In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. "It's a big part of their income," one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents.
The whole conduct of the war is a colossal screw up (as most wars are). The contractors make money, the arms suppliers make money, the military gets to play with their toys, and the locals get squeezed between the two sides.
At a time when the country is borrowing $120 billion a month to pay its bills this is one budget item that needs to be cut.
When you are short of money you have to start being smart about how you spend it. Throwing $50 billion at Afghanistan in the ways that are being advocated is nothing short of insane. It is good to see Obama asking for an exit strategy now, but really, how have these proposals gotten this far. Is no body looking at the cost?