What Is 10 Billion Dollars A Month?

The monthly cost to nation build in Afghanistan.

It's time to bring our troops and money home. We need to start nation building at home.

Eugene Robinson nails in in today Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-plan-for-afghanistan-declare-victory--and-leave/2011/06/09/AGz8LrNH_story.html

 

I was going to say the amount of money Grantland saves on news print by being a strictly digital publication.

 

I was going to say the value of about 833 1/3 Leona Helmsley dogs.

 

I'm with you 100 percent on this one.

I want us out. I want the troops home. I want the money spent on something that actually benefits the people who live in this country.

When you're $14 Trillion in debt and unemployment is hovering around 10 percent you can't afford to play World Police.

This was actually one of the few reasons I didn't mind Obama getting elected, because while I don't agree with many of his economic policies, I thought it would be worth it to get our troops out of the Middle East.

 

I'd be all for bringing every single soldier home, but he makes a valid point about not being able to see the goal line. I wish I knew what Afghanistan would look like five years after the last U.S. solider left. I guess I also don't mind crossing that bridge when we come to it. Sooner or later these countries are going to have to stand on their own two feet.

 

I too would like to see troops brought home from Afghanistan (and Iraq, too), for many of the same reasons you two do. Unfortunately, we all know that it isn't that simple.

Many of the same politicians who cry for "fiscal conservatism" also cry that any scaling back or even hinting of scaling back of military expenditures will weaken America and make it vulnerable to evil-doers. They want the U.S. to be World Police because they believe it fortifies the concept of America being the greatest country in the world (and practicing that concept is very lucrative to the Lockheed Martin's of the country, many of whom donate to politicians). Any politician who even remotely hints at not being totally gung-ho about a national defense or security measure will get hammered politically - just ask Max Cleland.

 

Why did Obama & his supporters only realize "it's not that simple" after he took office.

I did not hear this nuance prior to the election.

(And, I'm not even saying we should bring them all home. I wish we could, but I agree it's not that simple. But, I knew this all along.)

 

I'd rather see our troops come home from Germany, Korea, and even Iraq, before Afghanistan.

 

We will have spent 60 billion dollars by then and Afghanistan will still look the same in 5 years.

More young lives will be lost and our major cities will be in shambles because all of the money that went to nation building in Afghanistan instead of our own country.

It's a central question that anyone running for President should be asking:

Should we spend 10 bil a month rebuilding Afghanistan or The United States?

 

WFW...

 

Gates called out our NATO allies:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/10/us-usa-nato-idUSTRE7591JK20110610?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-nato-20110609,0,6023643.story

It's about time. If we're going to do all of the heavy lifting, the least our allies could do is step up and play world cop once we've gone in and killed people and broken things.

Our fellow NATO countries also need to allocate a higher percentage of their GNP to defense. They've had a free ride for way too long.

 

So you think what is going on in Afghanistan is more significant than what was going on in Germany in WWII?