Bill for Afghan War Could Run into the Trillions

Bill for Afghan War Could Run into the Trillions
By Eli Clifton

May 18, 2010 - -WASHINGTON, May 17, 2010 (IPS) - The U.S. Senate is moving forward with a 59-billion-dollar spending bill, of which 33.5 billion dollars would be allocated for the war in Afghanistan.

However, some experts here in Washington are raising concerns that the war may be unwinnable and that the money being spent on military operations in Afghanistan could be better spent. (ya think?!)

"We're making all of the same mistakes the Soviets made during their time in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, and they left in defeat having accomplished none of their purposes," Michael Intriligator, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, said Monday at a half-day conference hosted by the New America Foundation and Economists for Peace and Security.

"I think we're repeating that and it's a history we're condemned to repeat," he said.

Intriligator also argued that the real, long-term cost of the war in Afghanistan may completely overshadow the current spending bill.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes estimated that the long-term costs - taking into account the costs of taking care of wounded soldiers and rebuilding the military - of the war in Iraq will ultimately cost three trillion dollars.

They vote for flashy, inspiring, dramatic politicians with biting rhetoric.

Afghanistan broke the Russians and Reagan claimed the credit.

Afghanistan will break this nation too.

Repairing infrastructure
Providing health care for everybody
R&D for renewable energies
Environmental cleanup
Providing work for people who need it
The list goes on and on.

could pay for several things on that list, healthcare being #1.

Perhaps they could even go back to teaching "Civics" so the citizenry might have a clue when their rights are being taken away.

but then I thought of "NCLB", and I thought, not THAT type of education!


You are absolutely right about teaching civics in school. In the '70s, at least, it was considered our duty as students to learn about how our governments-- national, state and local--- worked. What happened?

we are fighting an existential war to make the world safe for "Gas Guzzlers" and for "Big Oil."

:shrug:

.. except to guard the poppy fields and stop China from building a pipeline.

Too late. China already owns us.