Afghan War Has Grown More Expensive Than The Marshall Plan: Report

The United States has spent well over $840 billion fighting the Taliban insurgency while also paying for relief and reconstruction in a seventeen-year long war that has become more expensive, in current dollars, than the Marshall Plan, which was the reconstruction effort to rebuild Europe after World War II.

A weekend report in the The New York Times compares the flat out deception of official Pentagon statements vs. the reality in terms of the massive spending that has gone into the now-approaching two decade long "endless war" which began in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

The Times report details in its story, bluntly titled How the U.S. Government Misleads the Public on Afghanistan, how public perception has been carefully managed amidst pressure on military leaders to justify massive DoD taxpayer spending byclaiming Taliban controlled territory is receding and the terrorists are on the run.

As the NYT report details, the exact opposite is the case:

But since 2017, the Taliban have held more Afghan territory than at any time since the American invasion. In just one week last month, the insurgents killed 200 Afghan police officers and soldiers, overrunning two major Afghan bases and the city of Ghazni.

The American military says the Afghan government effectively “controls or influences” 56 percent of the country. But that assessment relies on statistical sleight of hand. In many districts, the Afghan government controls only the district headquarters and military barracks, while the Taliban control the rest.

The report also provides shocking details of Afghan security forces greatly inflating their own numbers, likely in order to keep the bloated Washington money pipeline flowing into the country, which includes keeping "ghost" officers and absentee soldiers on their payrolls.

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