BE HONEST. WE ARE STILL AT WAR.
AND VERY FEW SEEM TO NOTICE
What are we going to do about this? (click here)
We have been at war in Afghanistan for 19 years.
According to the United Nations, "The armed conflict in Afghanistan continued to take a heavy toll on the civilian population in 2019, with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recording over 10,000 civilian casualties for the sixth year in a row. Since UNAMA began systematic documentation in 2009, it has documented more than 100,000 civilian casualties, with more than 35,000 killed and 65,000 injured. The impact of the conflict, however, goes well beyond the numbers, taking into account the extensive and durable harm caused to the physical, mental, social and economic well-being of individuals, families and communities." Read the entire report here.
In 2019, the number of troops who died during combat operations in Afghanistan hit 20 by December 22nd, meaning more Americans died there in 2019 than in any other year since 2014. Ironically, 2014 was the year the Pentagon announced the “end of combat operations” in Afghanistan.
Based at the Watson Institute of International Affairs at Brown University, the Costs of War project is a team of 50 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners, and physicians, which began its work in 2010.
A Costs of War analysis says that: "Nearly 7,000 United States soldiers and sailors have been killed post-9/11. But deaths do not tell the entire story. Since 2001, more than 53,700 U.S. soldiers and sailors have been officially listed as wounded in the major post-9/11 war zones wars. Many other U.S. soldiers have become amputees. From the start of the wars through mid 2015, there were 1,645 major limb amputations for U.S. service members associated with battle injuries in the major war zones. The Congressional Research Service has stopped releasing regular updates on U.S. military casualty statistics. In its most recent report, issued in 2015, the Congressional Research Service found that more than 300,000 troops have suffered traumatic brain injuries. Suicide is also an urgent and growing problem among the veterans of the post-9/11 wars. Although it is difficult to tell how many of these suicides are by post-9/11 war Veterans, because the VA does not disaggregate by war, there were more than 6,000 Veteran suicides each year from 2008-2016, a rate that is 1.5 times greater than that of the non-Veteran population." The report continues: "Between 480,000 and 507,000 people have been killed in the United States’ post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. This tally of the counts and estimates of direct deaths caused by war violence does not include the more than 500,000 deaths from the war in Syria, raging since 2011, which the U.S. joined in August 2014....The wars are ongoing, although the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq are less intense than in recent years. Still, the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan in 2018 is on track to be one of the highest death tolls in the war." Read the entire report here.
Another report from the project says that: "The United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $5.9 trillion (in current dollars) on the war on terror through Fiscal Year 2019, including direct war and war-related spending and obligations for future spending on post-9/11 war veterans. This number differs substantially from the Pentagon’s estimates of the costs of the post-9/11 wars because it includes not only war appropriations made to the Department of Defense – spending in the war zones of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in other places the government designates as sites of 'overseas contingency operations' – but also includes spending across the federal government that is a consequence of these wars. Specifically, this is war-related spending by the Department of State, past and obligated spending for war veterans’ care, interest on the debt incurred to pay for the wars, and the prevention of and response to terrorism by the Department of Homeland Security." Read the entire report here.
The Costs of War project again: "Throughout the years the U.S. has been engaged in the Global War on Terror, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, the government has financed this war by borrowing funds rather than through alternative means such as raising taxes or issuing war bonds. Thus, the costs of the post-9/11 wars include not only the expenses incurred for operations, equipment, and personnel, but also the interest costs on this debt. Since 2001 these interest payments have been growing, resulting in more and more taxpayer dollars being wasted on interest payments rather than being channeled to more productive uses. We calculate that the debt incurred for $2 trillion in direct war-related spending by the Department of Defense and State Department has already resulted in cumulative interest payments of $925 billion. Even if military interventions ceased immediately, interest payments would continue to rise, and will grow further as the U.S. continues its current military operations.
If war spending ceased immediately, interest payments on the $2 trillion of existing war debt would rise to over $2 trillion by 2030 and to $6.5 trillion by 2050. These interest payments will grow larger as the U.S. continues its post-9/11 military interventions and continues amassing debt to pay for the costs of war." Read the entire report here.
Evidence:
Barbara W. Tuchman. "The Guns of August." A Presidio Press Book. 1962
H.R. McMaster. "Dereliction of Duty." Harper Perennial: 1997
Thomas Gibbons-Neff. "American Special Forces Soldier Is Killed in Afghanistan." New York Times. 22 Dec 2019
"Afghanistan: Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict Annual Report 2019." United Nations. February 2020
Neta C. Crawford. "Human Cost of the Post-9/11 Wars: Lethality and the Need for Transparency." Watson Institute of International Affairs at Brown
University. November 2018
Neta C. Crawford. "United States Budgetary Costs of the Post-9/11 Wars Through FY2019: $5.9 Trillion Spent and Obligated." Watson Institute of International
Affairs at Brown University. 14 Nov 2018
Heidi Peltier. "The Cost of Debt-financed War: Public Debt and Rising Interest for Post-9/11 War Spending." Watson Institute of International Affairs at Brown
University. January 2020