The Price Tag of Afghanistan Dwarfs Country's GDP

[babylonsister]

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2009/10/the_price_tag_o/

The Price Tag of Afghanistan Dwarfs Country's GDP





The cost of America's military effort in Afghanistan is $65 billion per year -- and the price tag will probably go up when a new strategy is announced by President Obama.

There have been many hundreds killed and thousands wounded there.

But what gets me is that the entire GDP of Afghanistan is just $22 billion.

We are spending -- just on the military and not counting allied force commitments or NGO and other non-military aid -- more than three times the entire GDP of the country.

And we have been losing this war.

And now the military wants more resources, more troops and more funding?

-- Steve Clemons

[Arctic Dave]

1. But we built schools. Too bad no one uses them

because their too busy trying to survive. We would have been better off dropping money from airplanes then bombs.

[YouTakeTheSkyway]

3. I'm Not Sure On This Source...

but according to it, enrollment in schools is up from one million Afghan children in 2001 to six million today. That's a pretty huge leap. This will definitely help make Afghanistan a more viable country down the line.

http://us.oneworld.net/article/360514-afghanistan-schools-where-there-were-none

[AllentownJake]

2. Sure seems like pure lunacy doesn't it?

Neither Iraq or Afghanistan makes any sense but, Americans like to bomb things.

[kenny blankenship]

4. Is he counting the heroin?

It's not just about the amount of money. The kind of money and what you can do with it matters too. Great powers have oftentimes through history been attracted to large pools of "dark" untraceable money.

Flyspeck islands in the Caribbean don't have big GDPs either, but the fact that you could launder money and hide it there (part of the "special relationship" between Britain and the U.S.) made the islands much more important politically than their published GDP would lead you to believe.

[starroute]

5. The population of Afghanistan is 33 million

So that's about $2000 per person per year, compared to their current per capital annual income of $800.

Hell, we could give every one of them twice what they currently earn and still save $13 billion on the deal.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. So... we're...

worried about the profit margin?

[earth mom]

7. How much is that oil pipeline worth? That's the question.