Nick Kristof on the true legacy of the Afghanistan War.
A recent report from the Congressional Research Service finds that the war on terror, including Afghanistan and Iraq, has been, by far, the costliest war in American history aside from World War II. It adjusted costs of all previous wars for inflation.Those historical comparisons should be a wake-up call to President Obama, underscoring how our military strategy is not only a mess -- as the recent leaked documents from Afghanistan suggested -- but also more broadly reflects a gross misallocation of resources. One legacy of the 9/11 attacks was a distortion of American policy: By the standards of history and cost-effectiveness, we are hugely overinvested in military tools and underinvested in education and diplomacy.
Kristof goes on to point out "For the cost of just one soldier in Afghanistan for one year, we could start about 20 schools there." And as Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea
, has shown, those schools have a far more beneficial effect that the combat troops. I may be wearing rose-colored glasses, but it seems to me that the issue I have been haranguing you with for two years, The Cost of Empire, is finally penetrating into the national discussion.
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