Rep. Eric Massa VIDEO: War In Afghanistan Must End

Rep. Eric Massa VIDEO: War In Afghanistan Must End

2,950.

That's the number that echoes throughout Rep. Eric Massa's (D-N.Y.) five minute speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, as he fervently calls for an end to the war in Afghanistan. Massa builds his speech by listing off numbers that underscore the massive amounts of money that have been spilled into the war: 2,950 is the number of days we have spent in Afghanistan, $300 billion is how much we have now spent, which comes out to $3,947.36 spent by every family of four.

"Tragically, that's just the good news," Massa says. The financial losses are small when compared with the "irrevocable loss comprised of 911 American combatants killed and 4,198 seriously wounded -- and we do not have the ability to estimate the long-term wounds that we cannot see or quantify -- that will be carried by the soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines of this conflict for the rest of their lives."

This undoubtedly strikes a personal chord for Massa, as he served in the U.S. Military for 24 years and holds a degree from the United States Naval War College. A former Republican, he left his party over his issues with the Iraq War. Now, with the war in Afghanistan, he explains why he's just about had enough:

"...Since becoming a member of the United States Congress, the expansion of the war in Afghanistan has drawn my late night focus. There, in the quiet of the office, I have arrived at the inevitable conclusion that the deployment of troops in Afghanistan and the continuation of this conflict is both not in the the interest of our nation, and in fact is on a par with a potential error the size of our initial invasion in Iraq. The recent election in Afghanistan has underscored the fact that we will never create a Jeffersonian democracy in that nation ... to continue to fight and die for what the people of Afghanistan will not fight and die for is simply wrong."

WATCH Massa's full speech here:

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