$1 million to keep one US soldier in Afghanistan for one year!!

http://www.irishtimes.com...67165.html

The Afghan war has already cost nearly 900 US lives and $243 billion (€165 billion). It costs $1 million to keep one US soldier in Afghanistan for one year.
==
How can this # be so high? Where does the $$$ Go?

This war is absolutely useless at this point.
Lets flip this thing around, instead of overtaxing and overextending ourselves in this futile game of stacking stones up while our enemy easily and ins expensively knock them back down, lets let the Taliban and Al-Qaeda organize and stack their stones so WE could inexpensively and easily knock them back down.

Its such a sad pitiful joke that we are still there fighting against simple villagers. It is beyond foolish to be engaged against them. We should instead be solely on the money trail, people with the ulterior motives to keep the dust and confusion going, maybe people like President Hamid Karzai's opium trading brother. Speaking of Hamid Karzai, i never trust a smug man that always wears a fancy cape....should we expect a Taliban traitor not to also betray us?

We should be looking for the ones that are giggling because they spend nickles sending someone to blow themselves up while we run around like chickens with our heads cut off in high tech billion dollar gear.

This sad pitiful game has to hopefully end soon.
[Edited 10/31/09 19:20pm]

Lexington
To surge or not to surge
Oct 15th 2009
From The Economist print edition

The war inside the Democratic Party


BARACK OBAMA has already roughly doubled the number of American troops in Afghanistan since taking office in January. But Stanley McChrystal, the man he chose to command American troops there, wants tens of thousands more. If he does not get them, warns the general, the mission “will likely result in failure”. On the other hand, it costs $250,000 a year to keep a single American soldier in Afghanistan. An Afghan soldier who speaks the language and can drink the water costs only a twentieth as much, as one adviser reportedly told Mr Obama earlier this year. With the budget in tatters, the deficit swelling and foreigners audibly fretting about the dollar, can America’s president really commit to spending vastly more each year in the Hindu Kush, for as long as it takes to prevail? And will the voters like it if he does?

[Edited for compliance]




And there are other Democratic concerns. As the evidence of electoral fraud in Afghanistan becomes clearer, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, asks: “Do we have an able partner in President Karzai? Is the government capable of acting in a way that is not fraught with corruption?” And are America’s NATO allies, Britain apart, really committed to this struggle? Meanwhile, Jim McGovern, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, is pushing a bill calling for an exit strategy. He argues that extra American troops will only antagonise the Afghans and give the Taliban a recruiting tool.

Putting blood and treasure where his mouth was
What is Mr Obama to do? Public opinion offers no clear guidance. According to Gallup, 48% of Americans want to send more troops to Afghanistan, while 45% are opposed. Americans are more hawkish than they were a month ago, when it was 41% in favour of a surge and 50% against. But these numbers are fickle—the anti-war documentaries are only just beginning to air. Support for the war is weakest among Democrats, of whom only 36% want a surge, while 50% are opposed. Republicans are strongly in favour (73% to 18%), while independents are about evenly divided.

Democrats fear two things. One is that they might pour billions of dollars and hundreds of lives into Afghanistan, and still lose. The other is that a costly and unpopular war could scuttle their domestic agenda. How will they pay for universal health care, for example, if they keep burning banknotes in the Afghan inferno? All the big groups that have waited eight years for a Democratic president—greens, gays, labour unions, ethnic minorities and so forth—are at least somewhat worried that a quagmire in Afghanistan might cripple Mr Obama before he can grant their wishes. They think of Lyndon Johnson, whose escalation of the war in Vietnam, that “bitch of a war”, cut short his march towards the Great Society at home. So far, American street protests against the Afghan war have been small and sporadic—a few women in pink and committed peaceniks shouting slogans such as “Ground the drones!” and “Foreclose the war, not our homes!” But the protests against the Vietnam war started small, too.

Mr Obama is said to be searching for a middle way: perhaps a modest reinforcement, but not all the troops General McChrystal is asking for, coupled with a more concerted effort to help Pakistan deal with the jihadists in its lawless tribal areas. Some people fear this might end up being the worst of both worlds, involving a political hit for no military gain. But whatever he asks Congress for, he will probably get. Republicans are sure to back more troops, and even doveish Democrats will be reluctant to humiliate their president.

Mr Obama is wise not to be rushed. And he is wise to ponder deeply the historical precedents. But he might well reflect on a line from a British counter-insurgency specialist, quoted in Lewis Sorley’s book “A Better War”, which White House staff are said to be busily reading. South Vietnam, he says, could have been saved if America had not cut off military aid to its government. “Perhaps the major lesson of the Vietnam war”, said Sir Robert Thompson, “is: do not rely on the United States as an ally.”


Economist.com/blogs/lexington

http://www.economist.com/...4646613[i]

We will continue to pay for the buffoonery of the Bush administration and this current crop of goofball conservatives for many years to come, but if Mr Obama is tired of mopping up this mess, it's a good idea to empty out the bucket and quit using the same dirty water.
[Edited 11/1/09 0:29am]

SUPRMAN said:

realm said:

realm said:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/1031/1224257767165.html

The Afghan war has already cost nearly 900 US lives and $243 billion (€165 billion). It costs $1 million to keep one US soldier in Afghanistan for one year.
==
How can this # be so high? Where does the $$$ Go?

Tremolina said:

realm said:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/1031/1224257767165.html

The Afghan war has already cost nearly 900 US lives and $243 billion (€165 billion). It costs $1 million to keep one US soldier in Afghanistan for one year.
==
How can this # be so high? Where does the $$$ Go?

Correct or incorrect statistics aside, what's your point?

SUPRMAN said:

realm said:

Oh OK SUPA, I guess the $250,000 figure was off then???

http://www.npr.org/templa...=114294746

npr stating its a million.

realm said: