Ninteen Years after Nine Eleven

The United States has been at war with Afghanistan and Iraq for so long that the some soldiers fighting in the one-sided war weren’t born when the war started.

The one-sided war has largely been downgraded and the reason for fighting has largely been forgotten both by those who fight and those who stand at home and doing cheerleading for soldiers overseas, including those elected representatives that continue to provide the funding for the destruction.

At the beginning of this year it was estimated that the United States has spent over $2trillion for the unending the Iraq War. CNBC, last November concluded that the U.S. has spend $6.4trillion since 2001 on wars in the Middle East and Asia (I didn’t know we are at war in Asia). The key takeaways from the CNBC report were that

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan have cost American taxpayers $6.4 trillion since they began in 2001.

That total is $2 trillion more than all federal government spending during the recently completed fiscal year.

The report, from Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, also finds that more than 801,000 people have died as a direct result of fighting.

To break that down, CNBC says that in March 2019 “the Pentagon estimated that the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have cost each taxpayer $7,623 through fiscal 2018.”

The costs are not merely related to the waging of war, of course. As the war drags on “more and more service members will ultimately claim veterans benefits and disability payments.” Some – perhaps many – of the soldiers and support units that have been in these endless, one-sided wars, have already left the military and claimed benefits from the government.

It is the role of the government to support its citizens. The issue becomes why the government and the people are fighting a one-sided war where no one remember why we’re there or what we’re fighting about.