Posted on 03/24/2017 2:34:44 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
Americas 16-years in Afghanistan has so far resulted in 2,216 dead soldiers, 20,049 casualties, and an estimated $800 billion in direct war costs -- not including veterans health and pension payments that could reach $400 billion before its all over. Add another $100 billion of USAID reconstruction costs, which is more than the cost of the Marshall Plan to rebuild western Europe, adjusted for inflation, and youre well over a trillion dollars.
The Pentagon still has 8,400 troops in place, a figure Defense Secretary James Mattis may alter, which is why its especially troubling that Russia has decided to flex its territorial muscles and perhaps test the new Trump administrations resolve.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
I am a conservative with a pesky libertarian streak that tells me we are hopelessly losing the war on drugs and ought to legalize them to avoid erosion of our civil liberties, draining the treasury, and financing the very addiction we wage war to defeat. Not incidentally, we would go a long way toward winning the war in Afghanistan if we ceased financing both sides of that war with our insatiable demand for heroin which is made profitable both here and in Afghanistan by the very laws which prohibit it.
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