Bizarre, Military, Society

Cost of Afghanistan War This Year: $113 Billion

While Congress continues to plan for hundreds of billions in cuts and states are closing parks and educational programs, we continue to gush billions on three wars. This fiscal year alone the cost of just Afghanistan will be $113 billion. Just this year. Just for Afghanistan.

We continue expend lives and billions in a country where polls show the majority of citizens want the United States out and are hostile to our presence. Afghan leaders repeatedly have called for us to leave the country. The corrupt president of the country has repeatedly called the West an enemy, stripped women of protections, expressed a desire to be with the Taliban, and sought to tax even the aid to his country and charge for war damage.

It is otherworldly that we are planning cuts in medicaid and other programs while continuing these wars. Even if we pull out next year, we would have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this war alone with precious little to show for it except enriching some of the most corrupt leaders on Earth.

The American people want out of Afghanistan. Afghans want us out of Afghanistan. However, our leaders do not want to risk be called soft on the wars or responsible for a defeat. So we continue to spend money that we do not have and lose men and women who are irreplaceable. By latest count we are up to 1500 dead in Afghanistan — though it is the money that has finally gotten the Obama Administration to “focus” on reductions.

Source: USA Today

72 thoughts on “Cost of Afghanistan War This Year: $113 Billion”

  1. Now don’t be talking about your momma that way boi. Did it feel as good this time with the strap on as did last time?

  2. I don’t know everything about everything, but knowing more than you is not that difficult, troll. I’d say you’re dumber than a hammer, but that would be an insult to hammers. While there may be some superficial similarities, such as a hard head and a stick up your butt, hammers at least provide the utility of a functional tool with a purpose whereas you are simply a useless little tool without any discernible function or utility. At least that’s what your wife told me between squeals of ecstasy today. So please, next time you think you’re either smarter than me or better at insults, do come on back so it can be demonstrated that you are neither. It’s no trouble. Really.

  4. Where is that boi that knows everything about everything? Its Hurricane season, but the boi blows more wind than a gulf whirl.

  5. The cost of the war in Afghanistan is the one economic stimulus package that the Teapublicans will agree with. The problem is that it is only stimulating death and deficits.

  6. The cost of war is non-existant for some:

    “High court rules out damage claim against Ashcroft
    (AP) – 12 hours ago

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out damage claims against former Attorney General John Ashcroft over an American Muslim’s arrest, but four justices said the case raises serious questions about post-9/11 detentions under a federal law intended to make sure witnesses testify.

    The justices were unanimous, 8-0, in holding that Ashcroft cannot be personally sued over his role in the arrest of Abdullah al-Kidd in 2003. The court sets a high bar for suing high-ranking officials, and all the justices agreed al-Kidd did not meet it, even though he was never charged with a crime or called to testify in the terrorism-related trial for which he ostensibly was needed. …”

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ii1PnSh2HWuVOWrpEJodEyj78Hgw?docId=0d6926703b9d42a39ed4dcd8d9186ca8

  7. “There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.” – Sun Tzu

  8. The endless war is a useful fixture for a government that wants to engineer the society. The impact of war spending eventually becomes a driver in every other arena of government spending. We have the legacy of a bailout and ongoing lending to Wall Street sucking money out of the economy and the burden of a defense budget that accounts for half of government spending. Those things as well as no new taxes on the wealthy and corporations is off the budget negotiation table.

    I had hoped that the death of OBL would be the wedge that Obama could use to lever a quick end to to our wars and reinfuse that money saved into the budget to maintain and expand social spending. That would have been a way around the budget battles with Republicans that would have had a chance at at success IMO; once the wars are out of the way real budget decisions an be made. Doesn’t look like that was part of the OBL mission though.

  9. Lets just kill our selves now (not that i am) but come on! Anything has got to be better than the position we are in now. Not only are we struggling economically but socially and politically! America has poor leaders, military/war problems, a horrible economy, diseases, a huge unemployment rate, pollution, illegal immigration, and religious and race intolerance! America is going to fall sooner or later. What we need is someone who can fix it. Where in the world are we going to get that! Proving my point, lets just jump off a cliff already! I’m tired of all this crap!

  12. The key behind the endless war is “they”– as in “they hate us for our freedoms…”

    Yossarian: Those bastards are trying to kill us.

    Dobbs: Who’s trying to kill you?

    Yossarian: Everyone of them.

    Dobbs: Everyone of who?

    Yossarian: Everyone of who you think.

    Dobbs: I haven’t any idea.

    Yossarian: Ah…then how do you know they aren’t?

    McWatt: What’s that called?

    Aarfy: Sophistry.

  13. Knock knock.

    Who’s there?

    9/11

    9/11 who?

    YOU SAID YOU’D NEVER FORGET!

    Because 9/11 changed everything.

    We declared war on a tactic and gerund form of a verb because they hate us for our freedoms.

    We must never give up in this endless war without an objective!

  14. But after two years in power, the Obama administration has been pitifully inactive enforcing voting rights. Numbers don’t lie.

    During his presidential campaign, Obama bewailed the number of vote-dilution lawsuits filed by the Bush DOJ under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to protect racial minorities. Yet how many lawsuits did his DOJ bring? Exactly one.

    Even the investigation of that single case, which I personally filed in March 2009, was approved during the last year of the Bush administration.

    The Perez-run division is hardly “open for business” when it comes to protecting racial minorities under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Instead they’ve been on a two-year coffee break.

    The Bush administration, in contrast, aggressively brought Section 2 cases against the city council in Euclid, Ohio, the school board in Euclid, Georgetown, S.C., Osceola County, Fla, and Port Chester, N.Y., among many others.

    The contrast between the Bush and Obama DOJ is more dramatic when enforcing the foreign language provisions of the Voting Rights Act. In some parts of the country, ballots must be in Spanish, Chinese or Vietnamese under federal law. The Bush administration brought 27 lawsuits to protect language minorities. They also entered into agreements in many other jurisdictions, including some cases that have strangely vanished from the DOJ Web site — such as a settlement I reached in Broward County, Fla. The Obama DOJ has brought only three foreign language voting lawsuits. And all three were started during the Bush DOJ.

    The Bush administration filed 10 cases to enforce the very important voter assistance requirements of Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act. Only one such case had ever been filed by any prior administration and the Obama DOJ has filed nary a one.

    False rhetoric and airbrushing the Justice Department Web site are the only ways you can make the Obama voting section look more productive than the Bush version.

    Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2010/12/obamas-see-no-evil-do-nothing-justice-department-ignores-voting-rights#ixzz1Ny4hbQxq

  15. Srsly, the Justice Department is as useless as tits on a boar regarding voting rights.

    and you should look at the record of the Justice Dept. in re to voting rights Bush admin verses Obama admin.

  16. Bdaman, yea’ you’d think some of those early procedural decisions like merging the ballots etc. need to be challenged as far as they can be- this election is FUBAR but there needs to be clear precedent for the next one.

    Srsly, the Justice Department is as useless as tits on a boar regarding voting rights. They should be the vanguard of challengers in a situation like this or challenging the new restrictive voter ID laws (aspects of which are probably in violation of Title VII) but where are they? I resent even paying their salary, we have no Justice Department, in fact what we do have is the Anti-Justice Department, so just stop sending them checks.

  17. Lottakatz

    That was a stolen election.

    Business as usual in American politics. You would think that Judge Kloppenburg would challenge instead of conceding.

  18. Bdaman, head over to the brad blog (if you haven’t been following it) and read what a farce the recount was: altered seals on the paper ballot bags, open ballot bags, etc. The recount was set to be a farce when the Kloppenburg lawyer asked that the ballots in contest as having a failed chain of custody and obvious flawed handling be kept separate from other ballots for recount and all attendant paperwork regarding those ballots be provided and that motion was denied.

    There is a very real possibility (probability?) that the 24 hours between the initial results being announced and the second announcement being made was spent for ballot construction and ‘stuffing’. Check it out, read through the articles and archive. That was a stolen election.

    http://www.bradblog.com/

    “Last Monday, May 23rd, Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board (G.A.B.), the state’s top election agency, officially certified [PDF] the controversial results of the extraordinarily close April 5th statewide Supreme Court election and its subsequent “recount.”

    However, as The BRAD BLOG has learned, the agency certified those results without reviewing hundreds of official exhibits documenting wholesale ballot irregularities, on-the-record objections from the attorneys of the candidate who filed for the “recount,” and thousands of pages of official transcripts and minutes documenting the entire “recount” process from the election’s most controversial county….”

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