Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Afghanistan Quagmire Watch

Robert Wright offers up two nuggets of information about the Afghanistan War that make me wince:
• At just over nine years of age, this war is already the longest in American history. And this Saturday we’ll eclipse the Soviet Union’s misadventure in Afghanistan; the Soviets brought their own personal Vietnam to an end after nine years and seven weeks.

• And the cost of the Afghanistan war already exceeds the cost of the Vietnam and Korean Wars combined, even in inflation-adjusted dollars. At $100 billion a year (seven times the gross domestic product of Afghanistan) this war is feeding a deficit that will eventually take its toll in real, human terms.
Wright makes a pretty good case that America's presence in Afghanistan does more to hurt our security than to help it. Read the whole thing.

1 comment:

KhabaLox said...

this war is feeding a deficit that will eventually take its toll in real, human terms.
Someone should tell Wright that the war has already taken its toll in real, human terms?