On September 11, 2001, the United States and many of its citizens became eager for revenge on Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. As an effect of losing nearly three thousand American lives, President George W. Bush signed and enacted a joint resolution, allowing him to “use force against those responsible for attacking the United States,” on September 18, 2001 (“U.S. War in Afghanistan”). Only a week after the heart-breaking attacks, the nation widely supported what would turn out to be the most expensive and the longest war in American history (Greenwald). Many scholars would argue that the war in Afghanistan caused catastrophe in an already unstable nation, complicated relations with “the most dangerous country” in the world, increased
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Many Political Science scholars, along with some of the armed forces’ generals, would agree in saying that the United States has wasted tremendous amounts of money during this time of war. For every soldier in either Iraq or Afghanistan, the American government spends $775 thousand dollars, more than three times as much as any other United States involved conflict. Additionally, the state of New York paid approximately seventeen billion dollars to the federal government in order to support the war in 2009 alone. At this time, the entire Afghan government’s budget was barely over one billion dollars. The fact that a small fraction of the United States is paying nearly seventeen times more than the country they are fighting for suggests that there may be wasteful spending within the war. In order to reduce the tremendous costs of the war, the United States should have avoided supporting private contractors and subcontractors. Due to the use of private businessmen, many of the American funds would only have forty to fifty percent of their value once they reached the troops. Furthermore, rather than building walls and barricades locally, the United States paid to have walls shipped and transported to Afghanistan through a long, expensive, and wasteful process (Greenwald). As an effort to eliminate the expensive shipping and contracting issues, the United States …show more content…
While they were being told that The United States was invading their country for their security and safety, their towns and villages were being destroyed by the same invaders. Where they were promised peace before, citizens now found themselves without many of their loved ones. This mass destruction could have largely been due to the thirty-one million pounds of bombs that were dropped onto Afghanistan since 2001. One citizen even exclaimed, “We expected the Americans to fight the Taliban. Why do they kill my wife, my children? They should kill the Taliban, not my family.” While, in general, civilian casualties may be considered a “cost of war,” the 235 thousand civilians who had been forced onto Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps might disagree (Greenwald). Just as they would have reduced the costs of war, hired civilians would have kept many innocent people out of harm 's
Many Political Science scholars, along with some of the armed forces’ generals, would agree in saying that the United States has wasted tremendous amounts of money during this time of war. For every soldier in either Iraq or Afghanistan, the American government spends $775 thousand dollars, more than three times as much as any other United States involved conflict. Additionally, the state of New York paid approximately seventeen billion dollars to the federal government in order to support the war in 2009 alone. At this time, the entire Afghan government’s budget was barely over one billion dollars. The fact that a small fraction of the United States is paying nearly seventeen times more than the country they are fighting for suggests that there may be wasteful spending within the war. In order to reduce the tremendous costs of the war, the United States should have avoided supporting private contractors and subcontractors. Due to the use of private businessmen, many of the American funds would only have forty to fifty percent of their value once they reached the troops. Furthermore, rather than building walls and barricades locally, the United States paid to have walls shipped and transported to Afghanistan through a long, expensive, and wasteful process (Greenwald). As an effort to eliminate the expensive shipping and contracting issues, the United States …show more content…
While they were being told that The United States was invading their country for their security and safety, their towns and villages were being destroyed by the same invaders. Where they were promised peace before, citizens now found themselves without many of their loved ones. This mass destruction could have largely been due to the thirty-one million pounds of bombs that were dropped onto Afghanistan since 2001. One citizen even exclaimed, “We expected the Americans to fight the Taliban. Why do they kill my wife, my children? They should kill the Taliban, not my family.” While, in general, civilian casualties may be considered a “cost of war,” the 235 thousand civilians who had been forced onto Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps might disagree (Greenwald). Just as they would have reduced the costs of war, hired civilians would have kept many innocent people out of harm 's