Afghanistan: Our Most Costly War Goes On
The liberal media have trained themselves to exploit any misstep or inconsistency that President Trump makes. When he announced his plan to continue the Afghanistan war, it’s very strange and ominous that the press gave little coverage to President Trump’s previous twitter comments on the subject:
“It is time to get out of Afghanistan. We are building roads and schools for people that hate us. It is not in our national interests.” (February 27, 2012)
“Afghanistan is a total disaster. We don’t know what we are doing. They are, in addition to everything else, robbing us blind.” (March 12, 2012)
“We should leave Afghanistan immediately. No more wasted lives. If we have to go back in, we go in hard and quick. Rebuild the U.S. first.” (March 1, 2013)
President Trump freely admitted that he has changed his mind about our involvement in Afghanistan. The war will go on, but our focus will be on killing terrorists and not nation building. He promised to pressure Pakistan to crack down on terrorist cells along its border with Afghanistan. He called on the Afghan government to rein in corruption. President Trump also wants India to become more involved in the situation.
The war in Afghanistan is America’s longest military conflict. Unlike earlier wars, most American families don’t feel impacted by the Afghanistan War. Unlike the Vietnam War and World War II, there has not been a draft, and no ration cards have been issued for goods and services. There has not been a special tax imposed to pay for the war.
The 2,400 death toll from the Afghanistan War is very low. In the Civil War and World War II we lost half million people in each conflict. Our losses in Afghanistan are so light, every time a soldier dies his or her name is reported in the national news.
The problem I have with Afghanistan war is this: money. War is an expensive endeavor, and a military campaign cannot be sustained without bleeding a nation dry. The Cost of Wars Project at Brown University has estimated that total war spending in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001 is approaching $5 trillion. Of that, roughly $2 trillion is attributable to Afghanistan. This massive price tag will only keep rising, as President Trump has now vowed to increase troop levels in Afghanistan.
The cost of this Afghanistan War doesn’t include future spending that will be needed for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Because of the advances in medical science, we have been able to save soldiers who lost their limbs or have suffered profound brain injuries. The cost related to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans over the next 40 years will be more than $1 trillion.
The government can only think in the short term, so budget planners have no grasp of the long term cost of an endless war. Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government said, “The cost of caring for war veterans typically peaks 30 to 40 years or more after a conflict.” But we are already at the point where we face a financial crisis every three or four months—which shows how much financial peril we are in.
World War II, in inflation-adjusted dollars cost $4.1 trillion. In the 1940s people were willing to pay that high price tag because they deemed it necessary to save the world from the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. I don’t think our investment in Iraq and Afghanistan has been worth $5 trillion. After we pulled out of Iraq, the military that we had painstakingly built-up collapsed in spectacular fashion, and ISIS used “our weapons” to completely destroy dozens of cities.
Afghanistan has been a hopeless cause for any empire trying to colonize or tame it. The British and the Soviet Union tried and failed to subjugate that land of warring tribes. Our wishful goal of just making Afghanistan a peaceful place is delusional.
Our relationship with Afghanistan is so disorganized; we don’t even have an ambassador to Kabul. A good reason why that post is empty is because every single year there has been at least one major attack against a Western embassy. Our troops operate from behind fortified compounds because the natives hate us.
I have to wonder if the reason why America is not clearly mentioned in Bible prophecy is because we will implode under the financial weight of our vast military complex. It might not be Afghanistan that breaks us, but someday the dollar is going to collapse and the reformed Roman Empire may just step in to take our place.
“After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things” (Daniel 7:7-8).
–Todd
Bannon vs Globalists and Bible Prophecy
Observers of end-times events who believe there is an advancing power grab by the globalists elite look with interest at Steve Bannon’s exit as President Trump’s chief strategist. National politics that make up part of the intrigues going on in the White House are secondary at most, so the thinking goes. Matters involving the long-sought changed world order is all-important in considering the most recent developments in Washington, D.C.
On the secular side, many–perhaps most–media pundits speculate that the Republican establishment types have succeeded in convincing Trump to get rid of the ultranationalist Bannon (as they view him), so Congress will work with Trump in achieving a more rational legislative agenda. These, of course, have no concept that there is a much deeper meaning to all of this.
I take that back to some extent. They do have a strangely twisted thought process that touches on Bible prophecy yet to unfold.
Bannon, it seems, according to a number of these pundits, has an apocalyptic view of the world. He believes that Trump and America somehow are destined to be involved in world history as it winds up.
The media types who purport this to be the case don’t go far into this accusation. That is, they don’t give us details about how Mr. Bannon’s end-times view might possibly have affected any outcome he personally desired to achieve while advising the president.
It is indeed strange…the secular media types sensing and commenting that there is some weird connection to apocalyptic matters in all of these goings-on.
There is such visceral hatred for this president that when anything bad happens, his enemies in media and everyone else find ways to link Trump to the evil involved. For example, this was the case in the recent white supremacist activities and the clashes over confederate statues in Charlottesville. Trump’s statements on the matters involved were made to look by mainstream news types like the president took the side of the KKK and the neo Nazis. Anyone who actually heard the president’s remarks knows the opposite is true. He plainly called out the evil. But, he made the mistake of saying there was evil on both sides. That gave the haters all the fodder needed to link him directly to the skinheads and all the rest.
In the same sense, Steve Bannon is linked by the mainstream news types to a mindset like the Ayatollahs who want to bring on their version of the apocalypse. That is as deeply into Bannon’s “apocalyptic” worldview of geopolitics as they wish to delve. If they can make that linkage in the mind of the American voters–the evil of Steve Bannon to the Iranian religious madmen–their mission is achieved.
Evil that lurks within the mainstream media as it currently exist, in my view, is the real linkage to the chaos now being perpetrated. It is luciferian. It is part of the Saul Alinsky blueprint–being utilized by the George Soros-globalist types–to bring America down so her power to influence is diminished. So her wealth can be redistributed to the have-nots in order to secure power bases for the globalists constructing the changed world order they desire.
There seems to me something boiling beneath the obvious–Bannon’s being dismissed from Trump’s advisory team in the White House. I have no idea of what that might be. Steve Bannon made the following statement shortly after leaving his post: “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.” Bannon said further, “We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”
He said also, his statement unfortunately laced with profanity, that he was going to fight the globalists every step of the way. Well, you had better have the Lord at your side in that effort, Mr. Bannon. The globalists–knowingly or unknowingly–have the most powerful being ever to be created as their leader. Lucifer the fallen is determined to prepare the planet for the coming of his man of sin. There is no political strategy–even by a top strategist like yourself–that can alter Satan’s plan for his Antichrist regime.
But the Lord did so–and with ease–in this last presidential election. He is still in complete control. Trump is God’s man for this troubled hour as we move swiftly toward the Rapture of the church.
Meantime, it is much prayer by God’s people that is the primary Tool that must lead the fight against the globalists. Prophetically speaking, the battle is already won!
“He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” (Psalms 2:4-9)
–Terry