By Frosty Wooldridge

During an interview with the National Public Radio recently, the reporter said, “Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $30 billion annually, down from $112 billion in 2010.”

When you add up the costs over 17 years, as well as factor in the collateral costs, estimates range from $5 to $7 trillion.

When you factor in the 4,100 dead American soldiers, along with thousands suffering from PTSD, along with all the missing limbs from IED’s, that war reminds us of Hemingway’s line in his epic book, For Whom The Bell Tolls. “It tolls for thee.”

This week, several more soldiers lost their lives to the Afghanistan’s being trained, but turned around and shot their U.S. Army trainers. It’s occurred over the past 17 years nearly 100 times, but no one figures out how to stop them from killing our troops while training them to fight the enemy: which we really don’t possess a clue as to their identity.

Who fights who in Afghanistan? What enemy? Where does that enemy live? How do we beat an enemy that cannot be identified? It’s been said that empires go to Afghanistan to die.

Yet, somehow, after all the deaths, all the money and all the useless years of conflict in that violent country with its violent religion (Islam)—we allow our presidents and Congresses to fund it without end, without purpose and zero results for any sane person to tabulate.

In other words, that region remains a killing zone for our young soldiers being told they fight for freedom, when in fact, they fight for the bankers’ profits and the Military Industrial Complex’s profiteering.

Nonetheless, the American people offer up their money, their kids and their military to support endless wars that accomplish NOTHING. Because it’s all volunteer, no one blinks at all the death and money spent over the years.

The Total Costs: Staggering

Journalist Niall McCarthy at Forbes reported, “Overseas Contingency Operations funds specifically dedicated to the war come to $773 billion. $243 billion can be attributed to increases in the base budget of the Department of Defense while the increase in the Veterans Administration budget cost $54.2 billion. The financial side of the conflict reached its zenith amid Obama’s troop surge in 2010 when costs ran to $112.7 billion. As the military gradually shifted its focus away from offensive operations and concentrated more on training Afghan forces, costs gradually fell, reaching $30.8 billion in 2016.”(Source: Forbes, August 24, 2017, The Financial Cost Of U.S. Involvement In Afghanistan)

When you add up death benefits to kin, hospital costs for wounded, destroyed lives, drug addiction, completely shredded lives of men and their families, distraught children and much more, why in the hell are we still fighting a war in Afghanistan, a goat-herder and opium nation with more sand than the Sahara?

1. all of that “no results” year after year, the propaganda campaign says, “Support Our Troops”. In other words, keep supporting the war and their deaths, and our growing $21 trillion national debt. You should keep supporting the war that hasn’t accomplished anything other than death for 17 years. It hasn’t made America safer. It hasn’t preserved freedom. It hasn’t made the world safer.

What does that say about the 535 men and women in Congress who vote for this insanity? What does it say for presidents from Bush, Obama and Trump who continue the killing fields, but cannot give a single reasonable answer as to why they commit so many to death on both sides of the deadly war games?

And why do the American people sit by, pretend the troops fight for freedom, when in fact, that war stands for making money for bankers and all the slime balls along the financial path? Nobody gives a damned about our troops as long as it’s not their kid.

It’s ironic in that $7 trillion in war costs could have funded homes for over 1.5 million homeless Americans. It could have funded our health care systems for our citizens for decades. It could have funded enormous educational and afterschool classes and vocational tech training for millions of inner city youth. How about decreasing our national debt? What about our 70,000 opioid deaths annually? What funding college tuition for our kids? What about our crumbling infrastructure? Why not fix our country before destroying other countries?

In summing this insane war up, how stupid are our leaders? How stupid are the American people to vote for them? How completely out of our minds are we to continue a war for 17 years with a goat herder and opium-growing third world country?

As Forrest Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

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