May 2, 2011

Afghanistan war request for 2012: $113.7 billion

Spending on Afghanistan for the current fiscal year will be $118.6 billion and for FY 2012, the request is $113.7 billion.

Can we go home now?

By Steve Sailer on 5/02/2011

48 comments:

DCThrowback said...

Putting at as a portion of taxes paid, or about $1.7Tn, is 6.5% of our nation's "revenue".

Un-freaking-real.

5/2/11, 8:03 PM
Harry Baldwin said...

We've killed OBL, it's never going to get any better than this, so it's the perfect time to leave. As with other bug-outs like Beirut (1983) and Mogadishu (1994), the press will politely ignore what occurs after our departure because we're tired of it and no one cares anyway.

Are the Republicans dumb enough to think they can make an issue out of "Who lost Afghanistan"? Possibly.

5/2/11, 8:22 PM
slumber_j said...

Yeah: this must end. What do we do, kill the latest band of Taleban? And call it a day? I don't care at this point: almost any exit strategy is a good one.

5/2/11, 8:22 PM
RKU said...

Can we go home now?

Of course not. What may be burdensome to the host may also be beneficial to the parasite...

5/2/11, 8:37 PM
Bob said...

The GDP of Afghanistan is $14 billion, so for the amount we are spending there, we could hire every man woman and child for five times the annual wage.

5/2/11, 8:37 PM
Evil Whiskey 99 said...

Can we go home????
===================

* And let the terrorist win?

* Just when Afgani military, police and politicians are ready to stand independently on their own two feet?

* And have all our lost blood and treasure go for naught?

* Just cut and run like a coward?

* Just stand by and allow women be oppressed by Islamofascists.

* Freedom isn't free.

* Do you want to be fighting cave dwelling Islamofacistist with AK-47s there or vainly hope to dodge their sophisticated intercontinental multiple warhead ballistic missles over here on Main Street USA?

* These colors don't run.

* Do you want to embolden Nazi Iran to make the Persian Gulf their lake and drive oil to $20 a gallon?


Remember,

* Islam is a religion of peace.

* We are not at war with Islam. Especially not overtly in Iraq, Afganistan nor Libya and certainly not covertly in Yemen, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, etc.

5/2/11, 8:52 PM
jody said...

how much to invade and occupy pakistan, keyboard warriors?

113 billion for a small undeveloped shithole called afghanistan, what do you estimate pakistan would run per year? about 600 billion, like i said? or maybe 700 billion. who knows.

yeah, let's do that. let's kick pakistan ass. let's risk losing control of a few nuclear devices, let's get involved in pacifying a huge muslim nation the only way possible, by having 500 THOUSAND troops in country keeping rifles in their faces 24 hours a day. sounds awesome. musharraf is having a hard time keeping it together there, i'm sure the locals will be totally amenable to having americans come in, kill a few thousand people, then trying to run the show.

i'm ready for a draft, are you, anonymous GI joe posters? because that's what would happen. i've been running 30 miles a week, been lifting weights every day for a year, i've got my resting heart rate down to 45 and my bodyweight down to 215 at 12% body fat - hardly as fit as i was when i was 22 but i'll still demolish the weak, watered down basic the army has now. i actually know how to shoot a gun because i've shot about two dozen guns over the last 10 years. not so good with a pistol at 50 meters but decent with a rifle at 300. how many of these keyboard warriors have ever even touched a gun? i'm not talking about call of duty, either.

LOL. internet tough guys and their BS about how easy it would be to "just" take out the leadership in pakistan. wasn't that the plan in iraq? how did it work out? 8 years later and still trying to stop the suicide bombers.

want to talk about easy? let's talk about how utterly easy it would be to secure the US-mexico border. now that's easy. 20 billion tops to build a barrier along the entire border that will intercept 99% of traffic, 5 billion a year to staff and maintain it. compare this to...113 billion.

5/2/11, 9:02 PM
Anonymous said...

Steve, your hyper link for '$118.6 billion' does not work. But if you want a source, here is the DoD press release from Feb 2011 where Gates asks for similar funds for Afghanistan.

5/2/11, 9:06 PM
Anonymous said...

Steve - Give it up. All of this handwringing about the "cost" and complications of doing business in Pakistan/Afghanistan is B.S. You, your posters, and everyone else knows that no matter who or what party is in power we would have a presence in those theatres. The Middle East is a complicated place - there are no easy answers. I know its hard but admit that a lot of what you and your followers have written about Obama looks foolish in light of yesterday. The man was decisive, bold, and reasoned in his approach to killing the monster of 9/11. You,Trump, Rush, and a whole lot of other people know this deep in your hearts also. Half Blooded Prince my a**.

5/2/11, 9:15 PM
jody said...

"The GDP of Afghanistan is $14 billion, so for the amount we are spending there, we could hire every man woman and child for five times the annual wage."

haha! oh man, damn. that is some seriously damning stuff. unbelievable the US is going in 8 to 1 on this.

bob is on the money here. makes more sense to just plain pay them all to not do anything, the way the US national government now (perhaps unintentionally) pays so many africans in america to just chill, sit and watch television.

5/2/11, 9:23 PM
Anonymous said...

Of course not. What may be burdensome to the host may also be beneficial to the parasite...

This kind of coded anti-Semitism is pretty offensive.

5/2/11, 9:23 PM
none of the above said...

Really, it's hard to think of a better thing to go another trillion in debt for than making Afghanistan safe for democracy. I mean, unless Goldman or Citibank make some more bad bets they need covered....

5/2/11, 9:31 PM
Anonymous said...

US invaded AFghnistan to replace the Taliban government with a US friendly regime, killling Bin Laden was secondary objective. THe primary objective still has not been accomplished because the Afghan government is too weak to stand on its own; IF US leave now, Afghnistan will either fall into the hands of taliban extremists or fall into the hands of russia/china.

5/2/11, 9:50 PM
Anonymous said...

Mommmmeeeeeee, can we go home now?

Shuddup Junior, no you can't, now go and play with your submissive Afghan war bride unless you want to reprogram her to Christianity and send her to your 39-year-old virgin brother in Alaska.

(Sigh) She'll just end up in an NBA harem, or a polygamous cult in Texas.

5/2/11, 9:52 PM
Anonymous said...

If US pulls out, then Karzai government would have no choice but to seek Russia/CHina for help and in return give them access to afghan's minerals deposits, and US would have wasted the war to benefit china/russia; if Taliban successfully topple the Karzai regime, then they would certainly retaliate against the US for trying to kill them for the last 10 years.

5/2/11, 10:08 PM
Fred said...

"You, your posters, and everyone else knows that no matter who or what party is in power we would have a presence in those theatres. The Middle East is a complicated place - there are no easy answers."

Afghanistan isn't in the Middle East -- it borders China, for Christ's sake.

"Of course not. What may be burdensome to the host may also be beneficial to the parasite...

This kind of coded anti-Semitism is pretty offensive."

If that was coded antisemitism, I missed it. Are there a lot of Jews profiting from the war in Afghanistan? If so, who? And how?

5/2/11, 10:20 PM
Anonymous said...

@Anonymous

I agree that coded anti-Semitism is offensive, but what do you expect on a site like this?

What exactly do Jews in this part of the blogosphere want out of HBD? They seem to want a state of affairs where Whites are racially aware and nationalistic and yet magically not anti-Semitic. It is understood by the Jewish leadership that Jews are far safer in a multicultural environment (look at Brazil).

5/2/11, 10:27 PM
Anonymous said...

Fred - I am the anonymous from above.
Give it up. The Middle East doesnt really mean the actual geographic Middle East anymore than a euphemism like "urban youth and "disdvantaged" mean people that live in a city or those that are poor. Middle East in the popular imagination means brown people who adhere to Islam and are indifferent/hateful towards the United States. Just like Urban youth = black youth.

5/2/11, 10:44 PM
Anonymous said...

"IF US leave now, Afghnistan will either fall into the hands of taliban extremists or fall into the hands of russia/china."

That will happen whether we leave now or a hundred years from now, but it's too big an assault on our ego to acknowledge we've no business being there. Pride goeth before the fall...

5/2/11, 10:57 PM
Anonymous said...

Yeah, well, "the popular imagination" and reality are two different things.

5/2/11, 10:58 PM
Anonymous said...

Anonymous said,

"The man was decisive, bold, and reasoned in his approach to killing the monster of 9/11."

I am not being sarcastic when I say that an average citizen like me would have made the same decision. I am supremely glad we got the SOB, but 99/100
Americans who were given the intel that we evidently gathered over the last 6 months would have made the same decision President Obama made. Bombing the compound into rubble would have been entirely senseless since we are told 1) intel never actually saw Obama but rather concluded only a high value target such as OBL would be in such a place and 2) bombing would have left us never knowing whom we killed....thus, I submit that President Obama's choices were limited, unless, of course, you list among the choices doing nothing. That, I suppose, is a possiblility, but not one 99/100 Americans would ever have considered with the intelligence presented to us.

We'd have given the go to the military and kept our fingers crossed.

If you term his choice, given the circumstances, "bold" and "decisive" and "reasoned", it must be because you found it so unlike some other choices he has made.

Sounds as if he shocked you that he could act like any other American.

5/2/11, 11:08 PM
TomV said...

Steve - Give it up. All of this handwringing about the "cost" and complications of doing business in Pakistan/Afghanistan is B.S. You, your posters, and everyone else knows that no matter who or what party is in power we would have a presence in those theatres.

That's why Steve was always complaining about Bush's wars as well.

Say what you will about Republican partisans (not many of them here), but at least they're not always accusing the other side of partisanship.

5/2/11, 11:20 PM
TomV said...

This kind of coded anti-Semitism is pretty offensive.

Explicit anti-gentilism, on the other hand, is just dandy.

5/2/11, 11:26 PM
Nanonymous said...

Speaking of un-freaking-real, another comparison:

National Institutes of Health requested budget for 2012 is $32 billon. Almost 4 times less than for Afghanistan!

So, what is NIH funding good for? Mainly this: In the last 50 years, NIH funding was perhaps the single most instrumental spending responsible for the lifespan increases in the USA (and around the world).

5/2/11, 11:42 PM
Mr. Anon said...

Of course we can't go home now. You just don't understand, Steve, and all the rest of you rubes in the heartland. It's complicated - it involves oil, and, and ...... the strategic supply of cerium, and perceptions ..... perceptions about....intentions. Just leave it to the grownups in D.C. - those solons in the state department and the pentagon. The guys who know things - things that they cannot tell you - but if they could - why, you'd agree with them completely.

So just sit down, shut up, and get with the program, you f**king tax-payer and let us run our - uh, your - I mean your - country for you, dumbs**t.

This is THEIR game - it's D&D for Harvard and Westpoint grads and all the wealthy f**ks who pull their strings - and THEY will keep playing it to the utmost of our ability - until we are all ruined.

We didn't get out of Iraq after we captured Hussein. We didn't get out even after he was hanged. We're still not out now. It will be no different with Afghanistan.

5/2/11, 11:43 PM
headache said...

Gee, they saved about 5 b.,what's your beef. Even the Pentagon is doing its share to balance the budget!

5/2/11, 11:57 PM
headache said...

Anon sez: Fred - I am the anonymous from above.
Give it up

How about you give it up. We are not about to submit to your revered king O*ama, who merely displays the dysfunctional African Big Man syndrome.

5/3/11, 12:23 AM
dearieme said...

For how long will China be happy to fund the American occupation of Afghanistan?

5/3/11, 1:52 AM
Anonymous said...

The only thing more amusing and predictable here than Whiskey (the Scots-Irish) calling for endless wars that just happen to benefit Israel and bankrupt the USA, or Truth getting huffy when white people notice that black people are rather violent and not very bright, are the endless posts whining about 'anti-semitism'. You poor, poor dears. How awful it must be for your to associate with us horrid anti-semites. And yet you keep coming back.

As for the $113.7 billion; I say if we are going to be forced to pay for this ongoing farce in Afghanistan, the very least we could have asked for was Osama bin Laden's corpse dangling upside down from a lamp post at Ground Zero, Mussolini-style. Instead they (they say) dropped it in the ocean for (bogus) concern about Islamic burial rites (which are furiously denied by, you know, actual Muslims). So, the misinterpreted wishes of alleged Muslims apparently trump the revenge-impulse of white gentile sheeple tax-payers...you know, the people who are paying for all this and whose country is being ruined in the name of this ridiculous and fraudulent "war on terror".

5/3/11, 4:10 AM
Anonymous said...

Afghnistan will either fall into the hands of taliban extremists or fall into the hands of russia/china.

And then Russia/China will be saddled with spending that $114 billion instead of the US. What was the downside again?

Btw Im British, I dont what we are spending in Afghanistan per year but I know its costing lives and military equipment all the time.

Update: looks like its costing us $3 billion a year at the moment. Im not sure what we get out of that, other than saving the US spending $3 billion more. I would count it as a victory if we could get the Chinese to spend that instead.

5/3/11, 4:16 AM
none of the above said...

I don't know why I am skeptical of the idea that Russia or China will be eager to step into Afghanistan if we leave. Say, didn't the Russians have some kinda bad experiences there last time around?

However, if they decide to, I hope they get the same joy from their occupation that we have.

5/3/11, 4:34 AM
Svigor said...

"Of course not. What may be burdensome to the host may also be beneficial to the parasite..."

This kind of coded anti-Semitism is pretty offensive.

Especially coming from an Ashkenazi-American...

5/3/11, 5:03 AM
Svigor said...

I can't help but think a thread wherein people are focusing on the value of Afghanistan isn't complete without the word, "opium."

I don't even half half-baked theories of how the word integrates, but that's where the money is in Afghanistan.

5/3/11, 5:14 AM
Robert said...

Quantitative easing is spending around 150 billion A MONTH every month of our grandchildren's money. And there's no prospect of a friendly regime on Wall Street emerging because of that. Afghanistan is a gamble, but it doesn't cost anywhere as much as Bernanke and it may pay off big.

5/3/11, 5:36 AM
Big Payoff for Who-Whom said...

Robert said...

Quantitative easing is spending around 150 billion A MONTH every month of our grandchildren's money. And there's no prospect of a friendly regime on Wall Street emerging because of that. Afghanistan is a gamble, but it doesn't cost anywhere as much as Bernanke and it may pay off big.

So we should let an arsonist burn down our house just because a burgler is robbing us at the same time?

How about we call the police and the fire department to stop both?

And how exactly could continuing to spend $113.7B/yr in Afganistan pay off big? Like Iraq paid out big for us only without the oil?

Do you really think the $113.7B/yr spent in Afganistan creates more value than 16.25x the benefit of the National Science Foundation ($7bil) that funds basic science and engineering research in the US?

5/3/11, 8:23 AM
none of the above said...

Robert:

What's the upside of our afghan adventure? Such justification as has been offered so far has focused on a kind of insurance policy effect, decreasing the probability of a low-probability disaster. But as far as I can see, there's no upside at all--the best we can hope for is to keep the costs down.

5/3/11, 9:17 AM
Anonymous said...

"And then Russia/China will be saddled with spending that $114 billion instead of the US. What was the downside again?"

i'm not saying russia/china will invade Afghanistan, i'm saying that the Karzai regime will become russia/china friendly, rather than US-friendly

5/3/11, 9:56 AM
Anonymous said...

Doesn't the Afghanistan drug trade generate an estimated $200 billion annually? And didn't the Taliban virtually shut the drug trade down in 1999 but since the US invasion Afghanistan is back to supplying over 90% of the world's junk? I'm no Krugman but it seems like $113 billion is not a bad way to invest other people's money even assuming only a fraction of the profits end up going to our intelligence services or those of our "western allies". Those helmet cams are expensive.

5/3/11, 10:02 AM
cj said...

please read one or two of these links before any more stupid comments

http://www.google.com/search?q=china+copper+afghanistan

5/3/11, 10:10 AM
RKU said...

Okay, so we're spending $115 billion per year on our Afghanistan War, the longest in American history, which seems likely to continue indefinitely until there's considerable "regime change" in America. Who cares!! Instead, we should get bak to focusing on the really important things we usually do, like complaining about Jose the Mexican gardiner and critizing him for helping to make Fast Furious Five a big summer movie hit...

5/3/11, 12:05 PM
alexis said...

* And let the terrorist win?

And your definition of "winning" is......

* And have all our lost blood and treasure go for naught?

The people who would use soldiers (including the memory of our dead ones) as some kind of guilt tactic to hold our country hostage to a failed war are no less terrorists than those who use innocents as human shields.

* Just stand by and allow women be oppressed by Islamofascists.

Calling all feminist warriors...

* Just cut and run like a coward?

I appreciate how you're enlisting today.

* Do you want to embolden Nazi Iran to make the Persian Gulf their lake and drive oil to $20 a gallon?

Can we start taxing gas more by putting stickers on the pumps explaining how we need to cover military costs?

5/3/11, 12:19 PM
Felix said...

i'm saying that the Karzai regime will become russia/china friendly, rather than US-friendly

Oh no and we can't have that, not the *Karzai regime*! We all know what happened to the last superpower that fell out with the Karzai regime, yeah, that wasn't pretty. A paltry $120bn a year is chump change to stay on friendly terms with those guys.

5/3/11, 1:49 PM
Harry Baldwin said...

Anonymous said...Fred - I am the anonymous from above.

ANYTHING rather than choose a screen name.

5/3/11, 2:57 PM
Evil Whiskey 99 said...

i'm not saying russia/china will invade Afghanistan, i'm saying that the Karzai regime will become russia/china friendly, rather than US-friendly

Karzai will probably have his junk chopped off and rammed in the mouth of his strung up corpse just like the last puppet of the USSR. That, or he live in luxery on the shores of Lake Como on however many millions/billions he skims off US/UN aid and the renewed Afgani drug trade if he times his escape well.

Whatever Afagani government comes to power after we inevitably exhaust ourselves there will do whatever is in their best interests. They will naturally have a bitter aftertaste from pointless and destructive US/Western meddling, but they'll have more longterm fears from the intentions of China and thier proximate economic and future military regional dominance.

I predict with 99% certainty Afganis will probably revert to their historic norms - happily killing and oppressing each other. If they ever become stable enough to establish a mining industry dependent on foreign support and workers, they will sell their commodities to the highest bidder on the global markets.

There is nothing to gain or even control in "Afganistan". The country itself is an illusion. It's a British colonial invention intentionally cobbled together from enemy tribes whose self-destructive hatred of each other is only exceeded by hatred of outside occupiers.

I can think of few places in the world that are less worth the effort we are wasting there. At least valuable minerals and other resources have been reliably extracted from the chaos that is sub-Sahara Africa and there have been historically reasonable pain thresholds to native resistance.

5/3/11, 7:08 PM
Mr. Anon said...

@Evil Whiskey 99 said...

Well said. Afghanistan is not worth the bones of one pomeranian grenadier, let alone another US soldier. If we want the rare earth metals it might have, we'll pay the market rate. We already get most of our rare earths from a hostile nation - China - so I don't see the problem from buying them from some other, less dangerous, hostile nation like Afghanistan. Hell, it might even persuade us to loosen some of our regulations so that we can open up our own mines again.

5/3/11, 7:35 PM
Wandrin said...

"The country itself is an illusion. It's a British colonial invention intentionally cobbled together from enemy tribes"

It's not even that. It's all the bits that were left over from proper countries.


.
"IF US leave now, Afghnistan will either fall into the hands of taliban extremists or fall into the hands of russia/CHINA."

The Chinese aren't that dumb.

.

5/3/11, 8:35 PM
none of the above said...

cj:

I heartily recommend that you invest your own money in some venture to extract copper (or anything else) from Afghanistan. Or perhaps to build a pipeline across it. No doubt, your deep understanding of the situation will make you rich, and then you can laugh at all the net.wankers who saw the country as an impoverished, ungovernable shithole packed with violent, heavily armed crazies and nothing worth stealing.

5/4/11, 8:09 PM
Anonymous said...

>[Re. Afghanistan being more costly than the Fed's policies:] So we should let an arsonist burn down our house just because a burgler is robbing us at the same time? How about we call the police and the fire department to stop both?<

Perish the thought. That would be the ultimate evil: coded anti-Semitism.

5/5/11, 4:09 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)