The Cost of War in Afghanistan (VIDEO)

As we pay our tax bills, it seems an appropriate time to urge everyone to Rethink Afghanistan, a war that currently costs over $2 billion a month but hasn't made us any safer. Everyone has a friend or relative who just lost a job. Do we really want to spend over $1 trillion on another war? Everyone knows someone who has lost their home. Do we really want spend our tax dollars on a war that could last a decade or more? The Obama administration has taken some smart steps to counter this economic crisis with its budget request. Do we really want to see that effort wasted by expanding military demands?

Watch Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and journalists, military and foreign policy experts, leading economists, and many more explain just how much the war in Afghanistan will cost us over how many years.

We must urge Congress to raise key questions about this war at once. As FireDogLake blogger Siun recently wrote, "Once again we are planning a surge with no exit plan and a continued lack of concern for the most basic protection of the civilians in the land we claim to liberate."

[WATCH:]

Watch the full video on "Rethink Afghanistan" here.

Comments

[blood1]

02:37 PM on 04/15/2009

People need to watch the PBS documentary from Frontline/World Pakistan and then decide. Obama may indeed need to rethink his strategy, especially is Pakistan continues to become a Taliban run state.

[RIXX]

03:24 PM on 04/15/2009

So what you want?

Invading Pakistan????

[Figerre]

02:32 PM on 04/15/2009

This is a crock! So it is ok to spend nearly half a $trillion in Iraq? and Afghanistan is a bridge too far? Get over your little selves, boys! Afghanistan at least hasn't hated us until recently - and even then, they are willing to give America another chance. They needed our help and the Bush Administration left them hanging in the wind while it pursued its own drummer - and THAT is why Afghanistan is now more dangerous with both the Taliban and Al Qaeda resurging. Bush bribed Pakistan and they took the money to the bank and let both the Taliban and Al Qaeda flourish in their country. If Bush had even one brain cell's worth of world history - he would have known what he was getting into, instead of being pursuaded by Rumsfeld and the other NeoCons into pulling the plug and heading toward Iraq.

It is NOT Afghanistan's fault that America deserted her -- AGAIN! We need to get back in there, secure the country and rebuild what Russia and America destroyed. Put the BEST teams back in-country and do the job right this time. We CANNOT walk away, we really have gone a bridge too far to abandon Afghanistan again.

[Princeton123]

03:14 PM on 04/15/2009

No, they did not ask for our help; we went there uninvited. secure the country for whom? For American built gas pipelines?

[Snuffleupagus]

03:55 PM on 04/15/2009

The 'job' you want done right, is the job of war. It is pure insanity to think it can be done right, as if Obama has some secret powers to wage war and make peace. He doesn't.

There were lies to get us into Afghanistan, lies to keep funding it, and now there are lies to try and get us to stay. Put our best teams in, rah rah team, it is all BS. This war is a waste of billions of dollars, of human life and it matters not if it is Bush or Obama selling it to us.