This should be no problem.  Obama and his followers were sharply critical of the last administration’s policies and said that they had the solutions.  I can’t believe that anyone would be so stupid as to publicly decry the sitting president’s policies during a time of war unless they really had all the answers.  So everyone should just relax and let Obama and his followers fix everything.  They must have a superior plan and they must have thought about how to pay for it long ago.  Anything less would make them appear to have underestimated severely the challenge of governing.. 

So, I’ll just wait and see what happens…

Slightly edited-ed.

One million dollars - every year - for every soldier.  Each soldier costs, each year, one million dollars.  What sort of oncost produces such figures, or is this the marginal cost?  Seems rather high, from over here.

I thought the original idea in Afghanistan was to capture Bin Laden and end the threat of al Qaeda. And what seems to have happened is that the administration got distracted by Saddam Hussein and Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, and didn’t finish the job in Afghanistan.

In Iraq we presumably went in to topple Hussein and end the supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Mission accomplished. But those objectives got replaced with an “exit strategy” of “insuring a stable government in Iraq”. The result has been that the costs ballooned to around a trillion dollars, significantly contributing to the doubling of the national debt in eight years and the economic meltdown that began in 2007 and continues to this day.

It seems that the original goal (and the goal which Obama reiterated in the campaign) of eliminating al Qaeda is being replaced by a goal of propping up the corrupt regime of Harman Karzai that lacks wide spread support among the Afghans. And the cost of that will parallel the cost of “stabilizing” Iraq—i.e., we can project that it will add at least a trillion dollars to the debt over the next eight years. Defanging al Qaeda is important to our security; the Karzai government isn’t.

Which is not to mention the cost in American lives and wounded in both cases.

It is really important that Obama forces the top military command to define the goals and the exit strategy.

Pageantmaster, read the article. It details why it is so expensive.

How about $400/gallon diesel fuel, not to mention armored vehicles able to operate in the environment, etc.

#4 I had tried to factor that in.  Even if the cost of one soldier paid the fuel bill for the armored vehicle he travels in that would produce 2,500 gallons of fuel.  Are there no economies of scale?

And it doesn’t explain the $400/gallon price tag.  Is that what civilians in Afghanistan pay?  One should of course factor in the additional cost of getting fuel to remote places which will increase the price tag somewhat.

My understanding is that most civilians in Afghanistan do not own cars. I have no idea what the price of gasoline is. But the Pentagon says that it costs $400/gallon to deliver fuel to the troops there. I suspect that there is no particular reason for the Pentagon to exaggerate the cost.

I recall another administration attempted to fight a war on the cheap and in an environment that, while hostile, was less difficult than Afghanisan. The result was increased American casualties.

Military vehicles that are heavily armored to protect troops from IEDs don’t come cheap. My guess is that those very heavy vehicles are quite expensive to transport to where the troops are operating in Afghanistan.

Add to that the cost of the infrastructure and support required for combat troops (going all the way up the chain of command to the Pentagon), is also considerable. Probably figured into the $1 million would be things like the cost of recruitment and training. It’s probabl not cheap to prepare the soldier for deployment or to transport them to and from Afghanistan. It would be interesting to know of the cost includes medical care, rehabilitation and disability costs for wounded soliders or the costs of transporting the dead back to the U.S. and their burial.

A good part of the cost is transportation - everything going into Afghanistan has to be flown in. A company’s worth of MRAPS, for example, requires about 4 C5 or 7 C-17 flights to move it into theater.
The only seaports available are in Pakistan, and nothing vital is being unloaded and shipped through them.

It is reported that the fuel is refined in Pakistan, then trucked to Kabul and finally flown by helicopter to the troops. The helicopters burn as much fuel as they deliver. It was not stated how the crude gets to the refinery in Pakistan. I would think that there are costs associated with protecting the refinery in Pakistan, the convoys of tanker trucks travelling from the refinery to Kabul and the storage facilities in Kabul—all of which would be vulnerable targets.

Back op topic: You are being hoodooded by the left who hate America. We can spend one TRILLION dollars on health care we don’t want or need, but we can’t protect America from Islamic terrorism. Wake up out there. To coin a phrase “Millions for defense, but not one red cent for tribute”.

We have already squandered one TRILLION dollars (and counting) on a pointless war in Iraq which did nothing to for our defense, but rather actually weakened it significantly. The original idea after 9/11 was to go into Afghanistan, capture Bin Laden and eliminate al Qaeda. Those objectives were abandoned to pursue a ill conceived and ill executed plan to eliminate non-existent weapons of mass destruction and a nasty dictator (who was no threat to our security and who actually had thrown al Qaeda out of Iraq years before).

In the meantime, the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated, al Qaeda is still at large and growing (including, btw, in Iraq). And now, apparently, the goal has changed from eliminating al Qaeda to “stabilizing” a corrupt, unpopular puppet government in Kabul.

Now if the objective is what it should have been ever since 9/11—to eliminate the threat of al Qaeda—then presumably, the trillion dollars spent would improve our security. If the goal is to shore up our puppet, Karzai, then we are pouring money (and what’s worse American lives) down a rat hole.

We do not seem to learn the lessons of history. Perhaps it isn’t being taught. Trying militarily to impose a friendly government in Afghanistan bankrupted the Soviet Union and was a significant factor in its collapse. Trying to do the same thing led to the fiasco in Vietnam and, more recently, in Iraq. And propping up friendly dictatorships in Cuba and Iran resulted in the present regimes there.

You are being hoodwinked by Cheney and Palin.

#10: Saddam should have been overthrown in ‘91. Trying to control him and his psycho sons was never going to work. Eventually he was going to end up with nuclear weapons, probably via Dr Khan & co.
A pointless war? I bet you said the same about the Surge - that it wouldn’t work.

#10: No, trying to fight in Afghanistan with a Soviet economy against US-aided Taliban is what brought down the Soviet Union - or brought in gorbachev, who tried to save the USSR but couldn’t. The ‘fiasco’ in Vietnam was self-induced. The Vietcong and NV were basically beaten in 1968.  That’s why they signed that fraudulent ‘peace deal’ in 1973. They bided their time until the US got sick of it and left.

My priorities as a tactical combat unit commander were MISSION, MEN and MATERIAL.  My tactical balance point was always focused on achieving the mission and ensuring that I didn’t do something stupid that resulted in the loss of friendly lives.

The mission in Afghanistan shouuld be the primary focus all decision maskers from the very bottom of the chain of command to its very top, in the person of the Commander-In-Chief (CIC), the President.  The mission is the driving motivation that the CIC must use to determine to what extent he is willing to risk and expend the lives of American fighting men and to provide material support those Americans fighting for us. 

Its not about concerns about the monetary costs of winning, it is about WINNING and thus preserving and enhancing our national security.

At Tarawa, on D-Day in Europe, at Iwo Jima and at Okinawa; the misson was essential and the sacrifice of American lives achieved that mission and the material cost was an afterthought. 

If Lincoln had worried about, in a manner that inhibited the efforts of the Northern Army, the cost in men’s lives and material after the Battle of Antietam, we may have well lost the Civil War or have ended up in a stalemate that perpetuated slavery and permanently divided the United States into two nations.

Its time for those at the top of the chain of command, especially the CIC, to be specific about what is required to ensure our national security and then tell us that the costs may be high but the goal of ensuring that security is essential.