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The Surge's Shocking Cost
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As Gen. McChrystal and Ambassador Eikenberry duke it out over troop headcount, Derek Thompson asks why no one ever talks about the soaring cost of the Afghan war.
President Barack Obama’s decision to send an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan took a detour Thursday when he was reportedly persuaded, by a foreign envoy’s cable, to delay escalation until the Afghan government proved its competence. Still the president is reportedly a matter of days from rendering his war strategy in Afghanistan. This will be a grave and significant commitment to a larger war effort that is already costing the U.S. taxpayer $144 billion, pre-escalation. So far, the debate over the war has been about strategy—counterinsurgency vs. counterterrorism—and has largely shirked the straitjacket of cost that nags domestic policy debates like health care and cap and trade. To that end, I ask a simple question: Why can’t a debate about war also be a debate about money?
Geopolitical strategy might transcend dollar signs, but it is downright duplicitous to say our deficit makes additional spending impossible—unless we’re talking about a war.
Budgeting is the art of tradeoffs. As we stare in the face of a record $1.4 trillion deficit, it’s important to cast into relief what we’re trading off with a significant build up in Afghanistan. According to both the Congressional Research Service and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, the cost of sending one soldier to Afghanistan for one year is approximately $1 million. Simple math reveals that a 40,000-troop escalation equals an additional $40 billion investment.
Put military strategy on ice for a minute, and think about that number. That $40 billion could be about half the average yearly cost of health care reform over the next decade. It’s the equivalent of our total education department budget for 2010. An additional $40 billion would double our Homeland Security budget. Comparing the fight against terrorism to textbooks and electronic records might seem impolitic. But spending is scarce. It’s also zero-sum. Geopolitical strategy might transcend dollar signs, but it is downright duplicitous to say our deficit makes additional spending impossible -- unless we’re talking about a war.
• Christopher Buckley: Lessons from Another War
• Reihan Salam: Is Saving Karzai Worth U.S. Lives?
• Gayle Tzemach Lemmon: Don't Abandon Us, Obama And yet, as the spotlight shifts to Afghanistan, our leaders are sampling many flavors of cognitive dissonance. Republicans who proposed a spending freeze in the teeth of a recession are now threatening to attack any troop escalation under 40,000. The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page once shredded the White House for “spending its way into deficits that are so large they dwarf any during peacetime in U.S. history.” Now it mocks the president as “wobbly” and “spooked” for not allowing Gen. Stanley McChrystal to add whatever dollar amount he wants to a blank check from the government. Sen. Joe Lieberman said over the summer that there should be no health care reform until the recession is over. He now considers anything less than a full 40K escalation a historic concession to evil on par with surrendering to German Nazis – this about a war we’ve been losing in slow motion for eight years.
An expensive escalation in Afghanistan should be vulnerable to all of the common concerns about our long-term debt and deficit spending. To take one simple example, Chinese investors have said that their confidence in America’s ability to govern its finances would be shaken if the United States didn’t find a way to control entitlement inflation. Andy Xie, a prominent Shanghai economist, was quoted
To a certain extent, war is always a debate about money. In the run-up to Iraq, one of the questions fielded by the war’s architects was “how much will this cost us?” The answers are now infamous. Paul Wolfowitz predicted that oil revenues would pay for the whole endeavor. Former Sec. of State Donald Rumsfeld cited an estimate from the Office of Management and Budget that the Iraq war would cost less than $50 billion. Now we know better. We know that the war in Afghanistan has cost more than $250 billion over the last ten years, and we know that $250 billion has not been enough. Reasonable people can say that we’ve failed to fund our ambitions. But eight years later, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the fault lies not in our funding, but in our ambitions.
To be sure, there is a dimension to the Afghanistan debate that goes far beyond red and black ink. There is no mechanism for the CBO to score the critical bank-shot of securing Pakistan by strengthening our presence along the Afghan border. Also, scaling down could help our financial integrity in the eyes of the Chinese, but it will impugn our moral integrity in the world’s eyes if we permit a reign of extremist terror marked by scourges of stonings. I don’t mean to combat our generals’ advice with my own. I’m only calling for elected officials to consider the cost of war just as they would consider the cost of any other use of taxpayer dollars. Generals on the ground advocating for an expensive counterinsurgency are only reciting their best opinion. That’s their job. The president should balance their recommendations with our capacity to fulfill them. That’s his.
Derek Thompson is a blogger and staff editor at TheAtlantic.com. He has also written for Slate.com and BusinessWeek.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
"Why can't a debate about war also be a debate about money?" ~ Derek Thompson
A valid question. It should definitely be put to those conservatives who feign such outrage at the cost of addressing critical needs like healthcare.
I'm in favor of war taxes. And not because I see it as some ruse to stop the war in Afghanistan. I fully support the war in Afghanistan. And you won't hear complaints from me if they want to raise taxes to pay for all this. What kind of person would honestly feel that the sacrifice of our soldiers was worth it, but some money coming out of their pocket wasn't? An extremely selfish one.
That brings me to certain conservatives. Now I agree with a lot of conservatives who claim we should pay-as-we-go in government. I think we need a lot more fiscal restraint. Afterall, it is obvious to a lot of folks these days that it doesn't work out so well for individuals to live far beyond their means and use credit like it is income. It should be obvious to everyone by now that it doesn't work out well when societies do the same. So we honestly expect that this works out when government operates this way?
I can understand the economy needs a jump right now. And we need infrastructure, desperately. But this should NOT be the standard operating procedure of the government and it often has been. It was under the Bush administration.
So, for those who a few years back wanted to raise taxes to pay for the Iraq war, while their motives may have been dubious, their rationale was sound. And those who supported the war but were critical of paying for it back then... They should be ashamed of themselves. It isn't just blatant inconsistency, it reeks of selfishness.
To anti-war leftists I would say: don't use political stunts like raising taxes to try to end conflicts you don't agree with. It's dishonest. And if you go down that path then show some consistency. Pay for your pet entitlement programs, stop laying it on deficits.
To fiscal conservatives: If you think we can't have necessary entitlements in this country without paying for them up front, then stop demanding blank checks for wars. I can honestly say I fully support this war, and I can honestly say I fully support a tax to pay for it. What say you?
As a registered Independent who likes to THINK of himself as a fiscally conservative social libertarian (of course my views on anything depend upon where you're viewing me from), I too am in support of taxes for ANYTHING we NEED to pay for, and taxes to adequately support our men and women in uniform are perhaps the MOST important thing we need to adequately fund.
But too often on this board, and in life, the arguments get whittled down into a "my side versus your side" battle. You should not presume that everyone who identifies themselves as having ANY conservative thoughts necessarily supported or liked the Bush presidency, or even VOTED for him! He was, by many views, not conservative at all, especially from a fiscal standpoint. Yes, there is a large group of right-thinking Americans who won't say anything bad about the Bush era because they just don't say anything bad about their team, just like there is large group of left-thinking Americans who now won't say anything bad about the Obama presidency even though he hasn't closed Gitmo yet and instead of putting out a plan to pull out of Afghanistan is actually planning on INCREASING our efforts there. Our society has devolved into a "my team, right or wrong" culture. There are not enough people in the middle, frankly, who can call a pig on either side for what they truly are.
With regards to your last statement on the challenge to fiscal conservatives, yes, I demand that we pay for the war, and a true fiscal conservative would NOT ask for a blank check for a war. But a true fiscal conservative would also have issues with your statement of "necessary entitlements", especially the adjective "necessary". The fact of the matter is that fiscal conservatives think the list of "necessary" entitlements is very small, and while many of us fully support the Federal Government stepping in to take care of those citizens who cannot take care of themselves in regards to health care (because America is a compassionate society and we are a compassionate people), we probably believe the cutoff point is MUCH lower than where you think it may be. And most importantly, we FEAR that the needed cutoff point is well below where our very left leaning House may have drawn the bill or would like the bill to move to.
Fiscal conservatives (or at least this one) have seen too much government waste to fully trust the US Government and our citizenry with the reigns for the health care industry. That doesn't mean we like it the way it is! That doesn't mean we'd not like to see SOME amount of benevolent intervention by our government! That doesn't mean we'd like ZERO control! It just means that we think a system totally controlled by the government is philosophically inconsistent with what we believe in, and just as importantly, damned to massive amounts of corruption. The latter has more to do, in my opinion, with the immaturity of our American society. We have shown on many occasions that we accept, and even revel in, the corruption of our various levels of government. The examples of this range from the classic voter fraud of dead people voting in Chicago elections to the money trails that govern what legislation gets written in Congress. In my home state, the corruption is especially obvious and egregious and runs the gamut of two Boston pols being under investigation for taking bribes from the FBI (both on videotape), to the Boston BigDig project which overran original cost estimates by something like a 7X factor, to the Mass Turnpike, an Eisenhower era highway (I-90) that was SUPPOSED to be delivered over to the federal government after 10 years of state-backed investments bonds were payed off (sometime in the late '60's when I was but a child) but for some reason continues to live on to this day because those bonds are just such a damn good investment (and we can't lay off all those pseudo-state workers who collect those tolls and screw up our daily commute)!
Once our people, our nation, matures to the point where wanton graft and corruption are not the standard byproduct of every government program or agency then you'll see some fiscal conservatives (not all) allowing for new big government initiatives.
Thank you for a very thoughtful response.
I agreed with much of what you had to say. I would like to add, sort of parenthetically, that voter fraud is not even remotely exclusive to Chicago. I'm sure you didn't intend such an implication, but I felt it was necessary to clarify.
No doubt I view entitlements more far ranging than you, but we're probably not as far apart as might be suspected. For instance, I do not support a government-run, universal health care system. This includes the public option. (I should add that, for me, this is not out of ideology but practicality. I don't think such a system is feasible in the U.S. But it seems fairly effective in some other countries.) I do favor a non-profit cooperative to compete with the private sector.
You cited examples of corruption among politicians. I could not stress enough that this is a serious, serious problem in our political system (and the world over). Where you and I would likely disagree is that I'd like to remove money from politics as much as possible to help combat it. Efforts to do this, however, tend to be strongly opposed by conservatives and libertarians on the grounds they are infringements on free speech and the like.
I would like to point out in regards to your examples of government ineffectiveness, both corruption and inefficiency are rampant in the private sector as well. That's certainly no argument for removing the private sector (though I believe regulations are often necessary). And while it may sometimes fail in practice to varying degrees, government is supposed to be accountable to the public. The private sector really isn't. You can argue 'market forces' but then, this too works far better in theory than practice.
I think the philosophy of government taking a more hands-on approach than libertarianism would allow is that government institutions and the officials who manage it must also be held accountable. Some see this as a futile effort, nigh impossible, and others view it as well within the realm of the possible, indeed often a necessity, albeit one which requires constant vigilance.
That brings me to a remark that you made:
"Once our people, our nation, matures to the point where wanton graft and corruption are not the standard byproduct of every government program or agency then you'll see some fiscal conservatives (not all) allowing for new big government initiatives."
I have to disagree with you here. No doubt this is true for some, yourself an example, however, I think a good majority of fiscal conservatives refuse to allow more government entitlement programs and other initiatives not due to failings in our own society, but rather out of sheer ideology.
I think it is this that creates the true seemingly irreconcilable rift between left and right - liberals who insist that government agencies do not have to be corrupt & inefficient and thus can effectively manage more in our society vs. conservatives who refuse to allow such a thing out of genuine principle.
In closing, to me, government is neither inherently 'the problem' nor is it a panacea solution. I think we'd do a lot better off in society if we set aside some of the absolutist ideologies and adopted more of an attitude of go with what works & keep an open mind.
downbytheriver00 makes some excellent points and I agree wholeheartedly with the thrust of his post. The flipside of the coin is how do we prevent corporations from engaging in the same kind of corruption and abuse of power that government is guilty of?
The moral of this story is that war always hurts our economy, even when we win.
A war surcharge would be an excellent idea. For this and all future wars. If nothing else it would engage the voting class a lot more than fine speeches and whatever they might happen to catch on the news, and bring home to them truth about the monetary cost of war. We should be reminded everyday lest we think that it is free.
To attempt to answer the original question. If you are a part of Washington D C you never discuss war AND money in the same converstion.. Reason "Love & Marriage" you can't have one(war)) withour the other (money). And nobody in the political arena wants a taxpayer to know how much this thing is gonna cost. And DS for what it's worth I support it it also.
Tax to pay for war?? What do you think pays for wars now?? Our taxes! But the tea baggers only complain about the cost of HEALTHCARE! Go figure. As for supporting this war, it is the most unnessary war we have ever fought. We went into Afghanistan when we should have fought with Saudi Arabia. They are the Muslims who are exporting their Wahhabi fundalism to all these other countries, including America.
This war is bankrupting us and we need the money to solve our own problems.
No, our taxes don't pay for wars, they go towards the operational costs of running the US and all its government entities. Wars aren't considered normal cases...other countries buy up our debt, which gets ran up when we have wars.
bgeasyas123, how do you suppose that debt will be paid down?
From what I can see, we have the "luxury" of debating this aspect of war since we are not being attacked (or some degree to the right of a an unnecessary war). Obviously we can debate that Iraq and now Afghanistan are wars by choice.
The author contrasts cost efficiency with moral obligation. I always say you can't help anyone else if you can't take care of yourself.
War Tax? Makes a lot of sense; if we HAVE to choose war in this case.
Since we have the choice, I say get out now.
"Since we have the choice, I say get out now."
What does "get out now" mean. Is it going to be like the closing of Gitmo where its a multi-year process of winding down different efforts to leave some sort of organizational (even if tribal) structure? Or does that mean everyone out in 3 months? I don't think we should be committing ourselves to another nation-building effort in a country where such efforts would seem to be even geographically unworkable. On the other hand, we do still have a narrow set of national interests to protect even if we decide to leave (counterterror strat). Afghanistan is a decentralized country and it will probably need a decentralized solution unless we want to expend the majority of our foreign policy resources in Afghanistan, which will mean cutting deals and making multiple warlords, probably at the expense of human rights. We've got a lot of foreign policy problems that will need resources and I don't think we should be tying ourselves down to one that is important, but not pivotal.
And what would the cost be to rebuild a major city in the US after AQ detonates a nuclear weapon. A lot more than $40B.
While I unequivocally believe that if we are going to send our troops to war, that they need to have every single thing they need to fight that war.
However, let us be quite clear here about how much of our taxes are going where. Most recently we hear that we are spending incredible amounts of our treasure simply bribing war lords et al. who in turn use those moneys to buy weapons to kill the very soldiers we want to protect.
Then there are the billions of dollars spent rebuilding, all while millions of Americans are losing their homes, going bankrupt because they have no insurance, jobs are dwindling.
At what point do we say enough is enough ? It is all so easy for the pro war leaders to use the old " your pulling the carpet out from under our troops " Yet if we spent the money wisely and almost exclusively for this very support and not to bribe and rebuild, we would likely be able to provide all of the financial support needed by our troops AND save money.
Yes all of the above mentioned outside uses of our treasure are part of war but I want figures. I suspect we would find collosal waste. America is broke. For this reason alone, it's time to pull out. I have said this countless times, imagine how man jobs we could create if we poured those same moneys into creating a crack proof domestic protection system. Between law enforcement jobs and equipment sales. Yes Fort Hood tragedy's will likely continue to happen ( because of innefficiencies we thought had been fixed after 9/11 ). As heartbreaking as those events are, what we really fear is the mass attacks.
Yet here America is, once again, trampling all over the ME, breeding a brand new litter of America haters. It's a vicious circle. I ask all of you who favor being in Afghanistan forever, what have we accomplished in 8 years ? Nothing at all. OBL s still running loose as are many of the masterminds of 9/11. We are no closer to getting them then we were 8 years ago.
If America was swimming in surplus heaven then maybe we could afford to keeping playing cowboys and indians but WE ARE BROKE !!!! You want to tax me, fine but I will only accept more taxes if it goes to re-building America, making sure every citizen has health care and a job. Not funding weapons for the enemy. Lest we forget we created OBL this exact way. We created him. Continuing down the path we are on is only going to ensure that we create a new OBL.
You want to support the troops ? Pull them OUT NOW.
This is hilarious. In a sardonic sort of way. The two choices for debate are: strategy or money.
The writer laments the fact that no one wants to talk about the latter but of course does not even bother to broach the one topic the is really forbidden: The morality of the so-called war!
Talk about entitlement. Good luck with that.
What we need on these pages is a full breakdown of how each soldier costs us one million dollars a year. How much cost a uniform, a gun, ammunition, a plane ticker first class over. Tne overriding evil in this is military bureaucacy.
Were Abraham Lincoln president he would adopt the following strategy and order the generals to do exactly what this posting says. For sure it would cost less than one million dollars per year.
The issue is the Afghanistan monopoly on the world's opium poppy which is distilled into heroin right on the farm! That is the only issue behind the war, driving every thing! We started out al Qaeda was the issue but that is not true anymore. (I'm starting to sound like Edgar Allen Poe.)
Every time you pull in at a Stop and Go, almost everywhere in America, to get gas, or a coffee, or junk snacks and cigs, outside, leaning against the wall, a few feet away from the door someone is hanging out. That person is dealing crack, and when it's available heroin, that was originally poppy grown in Afghanistan.
This is all over our country. When Barky Obama's oldest daughter comes home from school with an almost unnoticible droop in her eyes, from a morning snort with a friend, then maybe our so-called street wize community organizer president will get wise to the real issue!
When more than one million pre-teen and early teen ageres are getting into heroin, and that is about to be happening in a big way, . . . "ohhhhh, I'm in control, I only use twice a week," then you will see the damaage someone, bound to be addicted for life, is willing to commit, to get their drug of choice. The mayhem coming to your life in America will be brought on by ignoring the real issue which is the heroin.
We are there! We can occupy all the poppy fields, dig in, and pay the farmers cash in advance (CIA). That must be our policy!
November 13, 2009. Cyberspace @ The Daily Beast (today is my birthday shhh 68)
I dedicate this post to all of those decent people who seek a rational sensible approach to defeating the Taliiban and al Qaeda, the reason we went into Afghanistan.
This is an open letter to president Obama, his, The Daily Beast watchers, and of course the readers and posters @ this page.
Here is the Afghanistan Solution, the strategy we need, what we must do, how to do it, and why, and what I, an independent candidate for president am going to do, my policy upon election to our highest office, a happenstance that cannot be ruled out.
The American people are definitely going to find out when I wrote this essay and where I posted it.
How the American people en masse are going to find out is "seek writ" media strategy me v. domestic counter counter intelligence volks who have dogged my life more than 40 years. I am duty bound not to release how I am going to get my name in front of all the American people. You will surely read about it. But I am not the issue here.
In the event president Obama decides to withdraw from Afghanistan, it will be on behalf of his reelection, not because it was or is the smart thing to do. Upon my election we will be immediately going back to Afghanistan, redeploying for reasons you can deduct upon reading the following.
So to the Afghani solution:
We adopt this opium poppy strategy, explained below, or we risk another terrorist attack in America, rivalng the 9 / 11 attack. Were that the only issue on the table it would be good enough reason for your close attention! White House officials involved in the ongoing Afghanistan deliberations should carefully consider what is here revealed!
The key to winning Afghanistan and Pakistan, to dissolving al Qaeda and Taliban, is controlling the opium they meticulously grow. On this planet, world wide, opium is the grand poppa of all opiates. That dirt-cheap heroin readily bought every day on the streets of Manhattan and Washington DC, on the streets of Kabul, and by the barrack gates where our tropps are billited, began it's life a sleepy Pashtun poppy, milked in Afghanistan, oceans away.
That 17% pure heroin bag; available on select street corners in every major city in the western world, started out an opium poppy grown in Afghanistan. You first saw the rich Afghanistan poppy fields in The Wizard of Oz.
93% of the world's opium is grown and refined into heroin right on the Afghani farms! They are not such a backward unsophisticated country as rigid status quo bureaucrats are apt to paint them. The farmers grow the highest quality most potent opium that yields the most heroin, world wide! Similar to our Iowa farmer's ability to grow bountiful crops of corn.
Bill Gates must marvel at their opium / heroin market share. Monopoly! Irreplaceable, worldwide; a blessing for all sides, especially us, because controlling the opium poppy fields means we will have taken over the main source of income for all the barbarian Taliban, the terrorist al Qaeda operations in all the neighboring countries, and all of the Western Hemisphere cartels and subtle European drug dealerships.
The heroin lifeblood for terrorists and drug cartels is smuggled throughout Europe, with tons, tons going by plane and ship to South America where, repackaged, its origin is disguised so no one gets wise; and from there, routed to Mexican cartels, and from Mexico, into our country, to be sold in our ghettos and suburban neighborhoods and school yards.
For the cartels this wholesale heroin represents billions of dollars in retail business. Billions of underground criminal, and terrorist dollars, our school yards one of their retail outlets!
The key to stuffing Taliban and al Qaeda, eradicating all of their corruption of Afghanistan, is to choke the opium supply the Afghan farmers are world wide famous for; choke the supply which would wipe out the opium / heroin smuggling trade; and choke their criminal customers on our side of the sea.
We don't have 68,000 troops in uniform, stationed in South America, chopping down the Columbian jungle to get at the cocaine plantations. That is not happening, and won't. But we do have 68,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan, more on the way and the opium poppy stratgegy carefully explained here will SAVE MOST OF THEIR LIVES.
Surely, you, the reader, hopefully a White House official involved in the deliberations over what and how to proceed in Afghanistan do not want to see any more American lives lost or blood shed.
The Taliban's and al Qaeda's end in the opium/heroin trade nets millions of dollars, peanuts in the big picture, falafel on the table for Taliban's "freedom fighters" over the border, in Pakistan; and money for the families of al Qaeda's suicide bombers throughout the region.
For the international criminal drug cartels the opium / heroin wholesale / retail is between 500 and 600 billion illigitimate unwashed tax free dollars per annum!
Without the opium / heroin trade, al Qaeda and Taliban would be decimated. The Western Hemisphere drug cartels would lose their hundreds of billions of dollars and would be facing their own recession. Street corner drug dealers would be signing up for unemployment checks. All of the illegal heroin in the United States would dry up as the pipeline for the heroin would be destroyed!
That is exactly what we want.
In Iraq, whoever is running the roads, wins. In Afghanistan, the opium dollar is fueling both the war and the Taliban structure, enabling them to strike! Afghanistan is a poor country with a rich culture. Whoever controls the opium harvest will have battled for that right. The hardy Afghani farmers get only enough to live decently and plant their fresh poppy.
The Taliban "freedom fighters" would leave for home in a heartbeat, were they not getting fed and allowed to while away the days smoking the black Afghani hashish. No food no money no fight. The newly chosen Taliban "leader" has a payroll he must meet. The opium proceeds cover that payroll!
Mr President Obama is our Commander-in-Chief, the civilian boss in charge of our ribbon shirts, but General Stanley McChrystal and his military bureaucrats, besides Gelb and his gang, and all the retired cable news talking heads grousing every day are all misreading and misleading the Afghanistan war.
The Wall Street Journal article: Top Troop Request Exceeds 60,000 by Peter Spiegal and Yochi Dreazen stated,
"White House officials familiar with deliberations said that while some elements of the Taliban were inclined to harbor al Qaeda, which operated freely in Afghanistan through 2001, other members were focused on Afghanistan's internal politics and much less likely to support the international terror group."
Oh! The taliban is more interested in securing seats on the local neighbor hooded school boards? Hardly! their Afghanistan infrastructure has one purpose: controlling the opium poppy after the harvest!
The Taliban differs from al Qaeda in one respect. Taliban are criminal drug dealers hiding behind religion and oppressing the local people they believe is the key to their continuing success in controlling the opium / heroin, whereas Al Qaeda smuggles heroin to fund sensless political attacks throughout their region, and to plan another 9/11 which cannot be accomplished without many millions of dollars.
A few years ago a Taliban leader came to Texas. Whatever the official reason for the "trip," talks about a potential oil pipe line, the real reason was to have some lengthy conversations on a throw away cell phone with Mexican and Columbian Cartel officials about shipping refined heroin instead of tell tale smelly opium. The Columbians got into the act because no one would suspect heroin originating in far a way Afghanistan would be round-about smuggled into South America, and from there, north.
The oil pipe line talks were a hoax. The Taliban were hear to solidify the opium / heroin pipeline, moolah for the mullah.
We don't need to build an Afghanistan army.The unalighned unofficial Afghani militias know how to fight.
With a little strucure and dollar support at the bottom, at the farm level, the Afghani people will protect themselves. Abraham Lincoln established a sea embargo to win the Civil War. Without supplies by ship from Europe, the Confederate Army was doomed.
Our troops get killed on border patrols between Pakistan and Afghanistan to protect our way of life across the ocean. Yet a stone's throw away, Mother Nature's opium is grown for the criminal and international terrorist's gain? How can our military be so dumb as to allow this to go on, creating millions of terrorist jihad dollars?
The only thing going across that Pakistan / Afghanistan border are paid fighters and convoys of drug smugglers hauling their cargo. The Afghan opium is key to everything happening there!
We own the opium and the country is ours. Free. Opium control means renegade Taliban, al Qaeda terrorists, and warlords are on the road again. Skedaddled or killed.
(I like the idea of not killing anybody.)
The White House failure to respond to this open letter will lead to loss of American lives, and seal the possibility of Barack Obama being reelected to a 2nd term in our Highest office. As the person who created the Vehicle for World Peace, I can promise you that much for sure. But I am not the issue here, only what "eye" say is the issue.
The opium production and our clear ability to control that opium, is the main and only topic.
Our guys must begin digging foxholes in every opium field, making Cash In Advance deals CIA with the Afghanis we are purchasing their opium crop for top dollar, in raw opium form. The farmers don't have to brew the black sap into a dangerous snowy heroin powder, so they are poppy plentiful, an ounce or two included for the house, compliments of us.
Raw opium isn't dangerous. You won't kill yourself smoking opium the way you can so easily overdose from a heroin syringe, so we want their whole crop raw, just like unefined brown sugar, and we will pay the refined opium heroin price which is similar to tacking on an additional 65 cents to a bushel of Iowa corn.
The war momentum will immediately shift!
Instead of Taliban's "freedom fighters" picking us off every other day as we patrol the dangerous Afghanistan border, we will occupy the opium poppy fields and wait for Taliban to show up, our invited guests for a steel jacket lunch.
The key to Afghan quality of life for Taliban, thugs without a country when we defeat them, to shipping their kids off to the Ivy League is based on who gets to stash the cash from Afghanistan's opium crop.
Would that be Karzai and his drug dealing family in Kabul? At the same time, on the diplomatic front we ought to push to reunite Pakistan with India. This will initiate an eviction of Taliban by the Pakistani people. For Pakistan, rejoining India means freedom, food, jobs, education, and a better life. Only their military bureaucrats are against this idea, and their minds could be changed with a passport, an SUV, and a forty acre guarantee in Montana.
Instead of knee jerk reactions to my The Hunt For The Red October reference to 'Montana," just get creative and plant that idea in Pakistan newspapers! Now is the time to wag the Pakistan India dog!
Sad, these policies, purchasing Afghanistan's opium, piecing off the Pak military, and reuniting Pakistan with India may be too progressive for the president, and for his Secretary of State Hillary Clintstone, too, but maybe not.
Certainly wagging this Pakistan-India dog will be incentive for the Paks to evict the Taliban and that is what we want! The Paks have nothing going for them under the Taliban gun.
Don't you know the Taliban bribed the Pak military for long-term safe journey with the opium money. That is how they established their foothold in Pakistan! Opium money! Too bad our President is surrounded by bureaucrats who wouldn't know the scent of an opium house were they standing at the door.
Many Taliban soldiers will change colors of their turbans and meld into the crowd as soon as they realize the opium harvest has been taken away from them. It isn't about religion, or the neighbor hooded school board, or how many times a day you pray to Big Al (Allah to you), it is about the opium / heroin and millions of dollars in cash! Seeing as you can eat three hot meals a day in the streets of Mumbai for less than a dollar, one million dollars = one million days divided by x number of Taliban grunts.
In Afghanistan, we need to get busy, prepare the fields, create comfortable foxholes on every poppy acre, booby trap the brush surrounding with a wide safe swath to the farmhouse, and make it clear to the farmers, by CIA shelling out Cash In Advance, we are purchasing their whole raw opium crop but paying top refined heroin price, so the farmers are with us! Super incentive for the farmers. Less work more money.
Taliban, Al Qaeda and warlords will have to exit their caves and cross the poppy fields instead of picking us off with their remotely detonated roadside attacks. Retired military will be opposed to this poppy war, but hard pressed to tell you why because they support that opium trade just the way it is.
We are purchasing their poppy crop, and negotiating fair and square and in advance how much sticky black sap can be extrapolated from each plant. Though I pun CIA as standing for Cash In Advance this is a job for our enlisted soldiers in the field to negotiate with the farms where they are dug in, not CIA officers who are from Kabul, not living on the farms in foxholes!
The plants, ripening by day, are the draw for Taliban, al Qaeda and warlords to show, the only way for them to go, taking on our troops in the poppy fields where we will defeat them!
When they come down the yellow brick Afghanistan road we can sting them from above. A couple drone attacks will turn them all around in their tracks. No opium no paychecks.
The extra virgin first milk is scheduled to start tomorrow. Our enemies know that. The farmers are out of the picture as they are already paid in advance. At 4:00 a.m. we begin snipping every plant two inches above ground with two handle bush trimmers, chop chop, just like that. At dawn, we start stuffing wood chippers and spread the soil with the chopped up results to fertilize next year's crop.
So good-bye Taliban grunt, and don't step on any land mines going home.
A couple million heroin addicts in Europe will be going cold turkey! The Mexican and Columbian drug cartels will be out of heroin, and lose hundreds of millions of criminal dollars in projected sales.
Regardless bureaucrats will be viciously against this operation. The status quo is how the rigid government's bureaucrats want to go.
But with a cash infusion at the farm level, Afghanistan will begin to flourish. The Afghani people will start rebuilding their own country, without corruption from above, roads and schools decided by tribal leaders in the farm districts, with a helping hand from us.
We must also purchase their whole marijuana and hasish crop, and either sell that to the shops in Amsterdam or bring each of the harvests to USA for medicinal purposes. or run the risk that that crop, too becomes an income for the terrorists. Afghani marijuana is the most potent in the world, best for relief of chemotherapy's side effects.
Regardless what Obama's surrounding bureaucrats say, we occupy the opium fields, purchase the whole crop, and all the heroin sold every day in our country will dry up! Young kids in poor neighborhoods will not become addicted to heroin. Don't we want that? Don't you? The opium / heroin dry up is guaranteed because all of the other countries where opium grows, they only have planted enough for their own home land and neighboring clientele.
The opium pays al Qaeda's world salary and the local Taliban. But who controls the opium wins the terrorist war, world wide! The above poppy strategy will accomplish our mission! Those opposed want things the way they are. Follow the money, Mr President. In the event we ignore the terrorist's cash cow, and leave, al Qaeda, opium rich, will have the funds to execute all of their murderous plans. Wasn't the twin towers brought down and their Pentagon attack enough for you! You inherited that issue! The opium trade paid for the 9/11 tragedy! We cannot risk allowing that to repeat. We cannot!
Unless Obama wants it guaranteed before the end of his first year that he is a lame duck one term president, then ignore what eye say.
A note to my The Daily Beast friends. I'm remodeling my page in cyberspace, taking my internet candidacy to the next level, getting ready to add a forum for commentary. Have a pre limb look, missing the Forum: michaelslevinson.com
candidate for president, b.November 13, 1941
I burped when the japs attacked the Pearl and began the 2nd World War.
michaelslevinson.com
You're comment is literally 3 times longer than the actually article.
If you really want to run for president you have to learn how to
be more concise and when appropriate, be detailed.
Right now you come off as a spammer and I'm sure that is not
your intention, but no one will listen to you if they think you're a spammer.
doesn't do any use...oliver gets called out everytime he posts, but he keeps coming back.
When your children start lifitng money from your wallet to feed their heroin habit; when you are strolling down a quiet street and three innocuous looking teens threaten you with a knife for all your money; when the price of every thing everywhere goes up 10% to offset the brazen drug addictive inspired theivery; when the jails are bunking three and four to a two person cell and the average age behind bars is 19; when educated young people start migrating to the homelands of their grand parents, for a better life, and it appears the rest of the world hs left us in our own dust, then you will recollect, that to save the lives of these kids from a guaranteed addictive life, and to show the way to world eace and food chain harmony - that i kept coming back and coming back. (Today is my birthday. happy birthday to meeeeee, etc.)
Try youtube.com/poetprophet
michaelslevinson.com
I just flag his posts as being a douche is totally inappropriate
Actually this post makes more sense than this war. There has to be a reason for spending so much money on it. They could just set the farms on fire, obviously there is more to it that we are being told.
We went there in reaction to 9/11. That was how it started. George F. Bush (The "F" stands for fascist) with his duplicitious Vice-president, wanted to get Saddam. It was a family affair. Saddam was believed to have attempted to assassinate George, the Elder, so 'Little Bush" was going to get Saddam, to one up his dad.
How many kids died. How much blood spilled? How much treasure?
The farmers get 1.3 billion dollars for their poppy crop, which is heroinized right on the farm with portable labs. The final wholesale to retail is between 500 and 600 BILLION dollars.
Our military leaders don't hold a candle to Robert E. Lee, or Ulysses S Grant. Our ribbon shirts are in the pockets of the military industrial complex. A ribbon shirt in Afghanistan referrred to the heroin they manufacture as an "opium product."
This is the cover up obscure language of fascist bureaucracies!
Convoys with tons of heroin aboard are allowed to pass our check points. On whose orders is this narcotic given a pass? Imagine yourself a Major ribbon shirt. Someone shows you a half million dollars in a Swiss Account and gives you a Bourne Identity like access code - shows you how to move five thousand into your daugter's checking account - to see how it works. Are you letting the convoys pass?
Setting the crop on fire is destructive!
Better we pay the farmers, and dig foxholes to occupy the fields. Our enemies, the Taliban and al Qaeda cannot survive without the sale of the poppy - the opium - the heroin! So instead of us driving up and down the roads, on patrrol, or resuppying our troops wherever they are stationed, and getting picked off, we occupy the gold mine and let them come to us!!!!!
Our guys dug in livable foxholes can be supplied with food and water from helicopters homing in, under the cover of darkness, not convoys up and down the roads. From Taliban's point of view, the poppy crop is what the war is all about.
michaelslevinson.com
TDB, if you keep publishing Olivercker's rants, I will no longer participate in this blog.
Rant: According to the dictionary, a rant or harangue is a speech or text that does not present a well-researched and calm argument; rather, it is typically an attack on an idea, a person or an institution, and very often lacks proven claims. Such attacks are usually personal attacks.
I don't rant. But your attack qualifies.
Do yourself a favor and visit michaelslevinson.com and scroll down to the second video, the story of Adman and Even in the Gar Den ov Edum which is the story that preceedes the story of your creation.
michaelslevinson.com
Why should debate about our Long War in Asia include consideration of cost? Hell, it doesn't even include honest consideration of US National Security.
It is War for its own sake... Group-think War... War of political momentum... War of industrial-sector wealth... War of ego... War of fear & hate... It is many kinds of War, but not cost-effective War, smart War, or alas, even a good War.
The more a nation ignores the price of war, the more it costs & the longer it pays.
Bring the guys home. Send the cops over.
And some lawyers...let's send them all our lawyers...
the terrorists, wait I guess we need to call them "suspects" are gonna need them...
AND wouldn't a Country free of lawyers be a great place!
Amazing how many people here have ignored the articles crucial question.."Why can't a debate about war also be a debate about money?" It seems that the answer lies clearly in who is running this war..the Obama Administration. When Bush was being hammered about the Iraqi War..and justifiably so...lives and money were ALWAYS mentioned in the press. Remember the threats and battles about funding and defunding hostilities?
Now it's Obamas "right war." Right war?
Occupying Afghanistan was always a more foolhardy notion than attacking and occupying Iraq. Iraq is, for its myriad problems, an organizable and occupiable place..Afghanistan!!? Obama must be joking....
This entire surge scenario is a showpiece for reassuring our allies and potential allies we are not a cut and run partner. There is no achievable endgame other than that.
For all their disgusting personal traits the Taliban and allied groups are not shortsighted..they KNOW..everyone KNOWS..that the closer the US gets to the next Presidential election the more of a political albatross Afghanistan becomes. Let's see..that's 2 more Winters...a couple of late Spring/Summer surges...about 2500-3500 dead US soldiers..a piece of Taliban cake! Times on their side...it has been for over a thousand years.
Do the Biden thing..accept civilian casualities..use drones and spec ops..put surprise and untouchability on our side. Watch the body count ratio change then.
@ Georealist....I totally agree with you about going the " Biden " route.
I also agree with you that the reason these discussions are proving harder to conduct now is because this war is now being run by Obama. However, I don't believe we see the same reasoning. Where I believe you think that Obama is enjoying " hands off " accountability because he is seen as the " messiah ". I see it as, he didn't start either war and therefore a great deal more lehway is being afforded to him as he tries to come up with solutions.
If nothing has really changed by this time next year, this laisser faire attitude will change.
I suspect that the recent " leak " about Obama approving almost 40K more troops was to test public reaction. It didn't go over too well and this plays in Obama's favor too as compared to Bush who didn't give too shits what public opinion was. He was sent to do God's work.
Once again I believe we should be following the Israeli example ( I have used the Munich movie of sending in special forces to kill of terrorist leaders ). In this case we could compare the Taliban to Hamas. After decades of perpetual pushing against Hamas. Israel backed off and I suspect almost encouraged Hamas's rise to power. Hey Palestinians you want Hamas, you got em. Now Hamas is losing favor with each and every passing day and we are not too far from the day where Hamas is marginalized because for all of their promises of a better life to their people, they have not delivered on any.
Now that the Afghans have had a chance to breathe the air without the Taliban, if the Taliban return to power, it will likely be the Afghans themselves that rise up, which is the only way. On all of this I know I am preaching to the choir with you Geo, but once I start =).
"The Wall Street Journal's op-ed page once shredded the White House for "spending its way into deficits that are so large they dwarf any during peacetime in U.S. history." Now it mocks the president as "wobbly" and "spooked" for not allowing Gen. Stanley McChrystal to add whatever dollar amount he wants to a blank check from the government."
When you type Wall Street Journal - why don't you just say RUPERT MURDOCK?
After all - he IS responsible for what they print or not print - just ask Tom Cruise.........
I have a funny feeling, if cost of the war was being talked about, we the tax payers would probably form protests, and riot police might have to shoot us, then where would they get the money from?
Sort of why they don't talk about unemployment that much in the same breath as homelessness. To assume all homeless are either mentally ill, or drug addicted, or alcoholic, blames the victim instead of the process which leaves so many out in the cold.
Why would anyone think the process would be any different. The war must be retuning a profit for someone. That is probably the real objective, I would think. We are never told what the objective really is.
The only country that wins a war is the country that does not fight it. If there is to be a war tax let it fall on the military industrail complex - Haliburton, Lockheed Martin, Blackwater, etc. Their profits are half the reason why this war is being fought.
The U. S. can improve it´s world image and it´s homeland security with a fraction of what is given to the Military Industrial Complex. General Eisenhower knew this very well and warned us about it.
Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, banks that took government bailout money after throwing the entire world into crisis, have said they will dish out $30 billion in bonuses - up 60 percent from last year.
Perhaps those bonuses should be directed to help pay for the war. Perhaps Wall Street should redirect those bonuses to the families of those servicemen who sacrificed their lives, or to the future rehabilitation and care of those warriors who made it back alive but disabled physically and emotionally.
As a result of this fine article I just mailed the following to the editor of my local newspaper. I invite anyone who wishes to do the same.
Dear Editor,
Fact: Many are demanding that President Obama send 40,000 troops to Afghanistan.
Fact: To send one additional military member costs $1M per year - as in $40B for the entire augmentation.
From http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-12/spilling-red-ink- on-the-battlefield/ we learn the following facts:
That $40 billion could be about half the average yearly cost of health care reform over the next decade. See Andy Xie's comment below.
That $40B is the equivalent of our total education department budget for 2010.
That an additional $40 billion would double our Homeland Security budget.
From the same article we learn that Chinese investors have said that their confidence in America's ability to govern its finances would be shaken if the United States didn't find a way to control entitlement inflation. (and)
Andy Xie, a prominent Shanghai economist, was quoted in The New Republic saying "At some point, if you refuse to contain health care costs, you'll go bankrupt. It's widely known."
The above are economic facts.
Now to the most meaningful fact - the personal cost:
Multiple (as high as 5 tours in Iraq/Afghanistan in 8 years) deployments has resulted in more than one half million of "Our Finest" suffering from some form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The suicide and divorce rates are the highest in recent military history.
Death and dismemberment are realities of war.
Off-the-Charts rates of PTSD is the reality of this war and it need not happen.
The cause is clear: multiple - back-to-back - deployments. The current Army deployment policy is supposed to be 15 months in combat and 12 months at home but many are being sent back into combat with only 6 months stateside.
To those in Wells County I offer a challenge:
Every person who supports this increase in troop levels in Afghanistan must telephone Congress and the White House and demand an immediate resumption of a universal draft (no married, parent, student exemptions) and a War Tax of 10% until all future and past war debts are paid and the VA is fully funded.
If WE are fighting a War on Terror then WE must actually support those doing OUR fighting.
Gerald H Fisher
Major, USARMY, Ret.
Thank you.
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