The colossal waste of the war in Afghanistan

What the hell have we been doing there for all these years? And why?

A soldier.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly)

I read recently that at the beginning of President Obama’s first term in office, the literacy rate in Afghanistan hovered at around 31 percent. Since then, America has spent more than a trillion a dollars in that country. More than 1,500 American soldiers have been killed, well over half the 2,279 total casualties since the war began. Much of Afghanistan remains under control of the Taliban and various terrorist groups. Major cities like Kabul are attacked almost weekly by suicide bombers; our eyes glaze over stories like this one, despite the fact that they take place in what is ostensibly a liberal democracy like Belgium or Costa Rica. The Afghan literacy rate in 2019? Thirty-eight percent. Bar napkin math suggests that it has cost us roughly $550,000 per additional reader. Very frugal, our military.

Some readers will be inclined to argue that my treating the sum total of our post-2008 expenditures in Afghanistan as the budget for literacy promotion is bad math, but I wonder what else we are supposed to think the money was for. As I write this, peace talks are ongoing between the Taliban and American diplomats — the Afghan authorities themselves have been left out at the insistence of militants, who consider the government in Kabul a puppet regime — and are expected to yield an agreement for the total withdrawal of American forces by the end of the year in exchange for — what? A temporary ceasefire.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.