The Two Trillion Lie

[tsuke]

Whenever anyone mentions Afghanistan the very first thing you hear is that the US wasted two trillion dollars there. Next comes the hand wringing of what two trillion dollars could have bought if invested in the United States. How many schools we could have built, what we could have fixed, etc. Only if only we did not go on our Afghanistan adventure. Does this sound familiar? This is all a lie. Whether or not we went to Afghanistan we were never going to save 2 trillion dollars. I dont deny that there would have been some amount saved but nowhere near 2 trillion.

Basics

Before we continue on lets at least make sure we are all dealing with the same set of facts. Just as a fun exercise at this point I would like you to stop. Ask yourself, How much did we actually spend in Afghanistan? If you are one of those who believe that we would have saved two trillion then the answer would be easy right? Two trillion. Alright. Ready for the actual number?

According to the US Department of Defense the total number that was spent in Afghanistan from October 2001 until December 2020 was 825 Bn dollars. With another 130 Bn spent on reconstruction and other efforts of that nature. But wait? We are two paragraphs into the article and we are already missing 1 trillion dollars. Where did that figure come from? The 2.3 trillion figure commonly cited comes from a Brown University study that states the US has spent 2.3 trillion. In that study they say that the US has also spent 433 Bn on Bases , 233 Bn in veterans care for Afghan war vets, and a whopping 542 Billion on the 1 trillion initially used to fund the war.

Now that we have our facts straight lets go to the funds actually used inside Afghanistan first.

Troops

It is hard to get exact expenditure breakdowns from the Pentagon but it is clear that most of the funds have been spent on the troops themselves. US soldiers need to get paid, have places to live, food to eat, and equipment and transport for their various operations.

At this point I want us to think back on history. Recall World War 1. Prior to that the US had a small army woefully unequipped to handle the rigors of trench warfare. We had to expand the army eventually reaching 4 million soldiers with 2 million actually seeing combat in Europe. I bring this historical fact up to ask the next question. Do you think we had to see a similar expansion in our armed forces to fight the Afghan and Iraq wars? The answer is no. We fought with the army we had. This means that whether the war was fought or not we would have largely spent the same amount paying, housing, and feeding our troops.

At this point I want to turn to a pet peeve of mine. Whenever anyone tries to provoke a reaction out of you by saying the US spends orders of magnitude more than its next rivals I implore you to think about what this means first. Consider that a US private or NCO would get paid as much if not more than most lower ranked Chinese officers. You could probably pay and equip several platoons of Chinese soldiers on the salary of one American one. Somehow people who understand that American jobs are being outsourced because their counterparts in Mexico, China , or Vietnam are paid a much lower wage cannot seem to understand that the same concept is at play in military spending. In fact if the day ever comes where we spend the same amount as our Chinese adversaries do is the day our army gets overwhelmed.

Afghan Aid

Now that we see that the initial 800 billion is already a sunk cost as we would have spent it anyway lets take a look at the money we gave our Afghani Allies. Officially the Pentagon admits to spending around 130 bn in Afghanistan. Of that money around 90 Bn has been spent training and equipping the Afghan Army. I readily admit that we could have saved that we could have saved that money had we not engaged in Nation Building. Though I would like to point out that had we achieved our objectives and just left we could have avoided spending the money as well. So it would also be fair to say that its not really due to the declaration of the war that this money was spent but rather it was due to our decision to nation build.

Next we have the 30 BN or so that we have spent as aid to the Afghans as we were pretty much the only thing keeping their government solvent and running. I admit this could have been saved as well though at this point I would like to ask a rhetorical question. In the event that we did not go into Afghanistan would we have spent no money on aid? What other leverage would we have had in order to capture Bin Laden? Its a counterfactual so there is no direct answer but I would be surprised if we sent no money at all in that scenario.

Lastly we have the remaining amounts spend by US agencies and their personell helping around in Afghanistan. Money they would have spend on their personnel anyway wherever they are.

Interest

At this point we leave the actual money spent on the war and move on to the theoretical portions of the Brown Study. The study claims that to finance 1 trillion worth we would have to pay 500 billion worth of interest over 20 years. If we were to do a rough calculation then we would come out to around 25 Billion a year or roughly 3% which is around the rate of treasury bills. I would like to point out though that we didnt borrow 1 trillion all at once. We took 20 years to get to that number. I would take the interest figure with a huge grain of salt.

Validity of the numbers aside were we just going to fire our troops if we did not go to Afghanistan? That would actually cause a fair bit of unemployment and might hurt many local economies. Again we were still going to pay our troops and feed and house them therefore we would still have borrowed money to do it. In fact for the vast majority of the 20 years in Afghanistan it was the Afghans we trained doing most of the fighting while the US took on support roles. Ultimately debt serivicing and interest would have still gone on.

Military Bases

The Brown study then lays all the costs of the US bases in the area and adds them to the Afghanistan War. At this point I would like to ask you if you recall what Bidens current strategy is regarding terrorism? That's right. Its over the horizon strike capability. Where do you think over the horizon strike capabilities come from? Yes from the US bases in the area. Bases in Pakistan, Qatar, and other areas. Now that we have left and this has become our primary strategy for containing whatever terror group emerges in Afghanistan it is very likely that this expense increases instead of decreases.

Health

Lastly we have the 200 or so billion spent on the care needed by our troops due to the war. I admit had we not gone in they would not have suffered these injuries. Though I suspect that even without Afghanistan they would still have been in active duty and would still have needed some level of care that is a counterfactual that can't be proven.

At this point we recall the original two trillion figure given by most major politicians and realize that the real number we would have actually saved is only around 300 billion. Don't get me wrong that is still a significant amount taken all together but spread out over 20 years that is only 15 billion a year which is a rounding error as far as the US budget is concerned.

For better or worse the US is the global hegemon. That is going to be true unless we hand the position over to China and I do contend that US citizens get material benefits because their country is global hegemon. However because we are in this position there exists the possibility that we may have to enter into another Afghanistan or Iraq. People may not want to hear it but the possibility is always there. When that happens we should go into it knowing what the actual sunk and variable costs are instead of the propaganda fed to us.

https://fpinitiative.substack.com/p/...Published=true

[dukkha]

^ good . TY.
speaking of costs what are the costs of having literally a "terrorist state" next to Pakistan?

The crazies of North Waziristan have a real expanded nation state now. One big happy.

[Hoosier Daddy]

wow, a stupid ass trumper happy we only wasted half as much money as we thought fucking around in afghanistan, not to mention the tragic loss of so many soldiers sent there for no good reason.

THE MAIN POINT IS WE SHOULD NEVER INVADED AND OCCUPIED THAT COUNTRY. once we somehow let bin laden and the core of al qaeda escape into Pakistan, we should have left.

[RB 60]

wow, a stupid ass trumper happy we only wasted half as much money as we thought fucking around in afghanistan, not to mention the tragic loss of so many soldiers sent there for no good reason.

THE MAIN POINT IS WE SHOULD NEVER INVADED AND OCCUPIED THAT COUNTRY. once we somehow let bin laden and the core of al qaeda escape into Pakistan, we should have left.

Blame Obama/Biden for not withdrawing then. Biden himself says the mission was finished back then.

[goat]

The Brown University study estimates $8 trillion in direct cost for all 911 wars. The study goes on to say that we're not done paying the direct and indirect cost from 911 wars. The big lie is 3 commercial airliners getting past the most sophisticated defense system in the world. Someone had to give the order to turn off the automated systems protecting Lower Manhattan and the Pentagon. Who could give that order?

[Walt]

US soldiers need to get paid, have places to live, food to eat, and equipment and transport for their various operations.

All that food, fuel, equipment, and most importantly fuel... Much of the fuel is flown around. It is not uncommon to use 20 gallons of fuel to get 1 gallon of fuel to the frontline.

At one point, the average cost of fuel in Afghanistan was $400 a gallon. It probably went up from that time. The fuel that was used to fly Americans out of Kabul Airport probably cost more than $400 a gallon. When Blackwater DEMANDED free fuel for their for profit missions, not only were they demanding a huge multi-billion gift from the taxpayers, but because fuel is in short supply, they were demanding we live behind thousands more so they could evacuate a few hundred for their profit. They even wanted to fly in mercenaries to steal stuff from Afghanistan, using taxpayer fuel to fly out the mercenaries and loot.

Basically, multiple every normal cost by a hundred, and you begin to get the cost of operations in Afghanistan.

https://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...n-afghanistan-

[Walt]

speaking of costs what are the costs of having literally a "terrorist state" next to Pakistan?

Pakistan's tribal regions are basically a terrorist state within Pakistan. Remember the Taliban, and Al Qaeda were formed in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

[PostmodernProphet]

wow, a stupid ass trumper happy we only wasted half as much money as we thought fucking around in afghanistan, not to mention the tragic loss of so many soldiers sent there for no good reason.

THE MAIN POINT IS WE SHOULD NEVER INVADED AND OCCUPIED THAT COUNTRY. once we somehow let bin laden and the core of al qaeda escape into Pakistan, we should have left.

actually, the main point of THIS thread is that once again, lib'ruls have distorted the truth.......

[Hoosier Daddy]

actually, the main point of THIS thread is that once again, lib'ruls have distorted the truth.......

no, the article distorted the truth. fuck the article. fuck you. besides, stupid shit, the repubs started the Iraq and Afghanistan boondoggle wars, stupid fuck. why would liberals defend that?

[PostmodernProphet]

no, the article distorted the truth. fuck the article. fuck you.

really?.....which of the facts in the article can you refute with evidence?........(by the way, when you resort to fucking the article its obvious you can't).......