As President Obama starts our intervention into yet another war in Syria and members call for even greater intervention, we have another measure of how costly our war in Afghanistan has been. Stars and Stripes is reporting that the U.S. will abandon or destroy $7 billion in equipment rather than ship it home under the tight schedule for withdrawal. Once again, history will record the insanity of both President Bush and President Obama in spending hundreds of billions on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while cutting key educational, environmental, and scientific programs needed in this country. Members who rail against support for things like NPR will not even take note of $7 billion in equipment going up in smoke in Afghanistan. In the perfect metaphor, the billions of dollars of scrap metal will be turned into Afghan pennies.
Some 20 percent of our equipment in Afghanistan will be destroyed or abandoned rather than ship it home. Much of the equipment will be shredded to make pennies for Afghans.
By the way, some of the trashed equipment will be the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles that were built at huge expensive starting in 2007. Now a few year later, the Pentagon says that it really does not see the use for about 12,300 of its 25,500 MRAPs. These vehicles cost $1 million each and will now be turned into pennies or scrap.
Once again, certain Afghan companies will be rich off the program which is selling millions of pounds of scrap for a few cents per pound.
The military says that transporting the equipment would cost $2 billion to $3 billion and repairing the gear would cost $8 billion to $9 billion.
Even accepting this cost-benefit analysis, we are still left with the insane cost of these wars. Few people in government are willing to admit how little we have accomplished in these wars. China is moving into Iraq and taking oil rights and other benefits. Iraq has moved under the sphere of influence of Iran. The Taliban is on the rise in Afghanistan and we continue to be hated in many areas. For our part, we have tens of thousands of wounded or dead soldiers and hundreds of billions in cost.
Now on to Syria . . .
Source: Stars and Stripes
jomo999,
The b-word is not allowed. Spell it like Tarantino.
Bruce,
From the partisan side you didn’t like him because he was Greek… And you probably don’t like Obama because he’s Black…. But the reality is Atwater was a great strategist …. From what I understand is before Lee died he called Kichael and apologized for his actions…. Now, when is Obama going to apologize for abandoning the principles of the Constitution…..and acting like a dark skinned George W. Bush?
I not racist… I voted for Michael…. I did not vote for Obama not because he’s black but because I did not trust him ….
“Stars and Stripes” evidently doesn’t understand that the equipment served its full purpose once it was produced and funds received for the product, enriching our illustrious war contractors “war chest.” War will always continue as long as gov’t goons are lavishly rewarded for stealing from the electorate via contracts with huge military/spy industries awash in taxpayer dollars.
I agree with Mr Spinelli the people dont know or refuse to accept that the taxes we pay are NOT used for anything to do with our country. how can it when israel receives 4 billion dollars a yr without fail . then there are the billions spent on specialized military weapons hence the article above. and of course let’s discuss the billions we are not supposed to know about and that is the weapons , prisons, and re -education camps being built for us while underground bunkers are being built for the elites. hell did they ever find out what happened to the 23 trillion dollars that just happened to disappear along with the rabbi from the pentagon on 9/11?
smh. they dont care what we think and are no longer trying to hide it. because they assume they are to rich and powerful for us to do anything. obviously we can break them and they know and understand that if they didnt. we would have felt no need to have to hide behind lies to start wars. fake terrorist attacks and threats, and murderous attacks such as aurora.
Dukakis destroyed himself in the ad riding around in the tank