The Afghanistan Weekly Reader: The Afghanistan War Ten Years after 9/11
The past week provided us with the opportunity to reflect on where we stand today, ten years after 9/11. Unfortunately, when it comes to the war in Afghanistan, this reflection is less than encouraging. Today’s report of an attack on the US embassy in Kabul is the just the latest in a series of reports on deteriorating security conditions, which indicate that we’ve made little progress. And the costs have been enormous: over ten years, more than a trillion dollars, and countless lives. Most disturbingly, there is no end in sight if, as one author suggests, we live in “an era of endless war.”
FROM ASG
9-8-11
Waste and Inefficiency Pervasive in Afghanistan and Iraq Defense Contracts
Afghanistan Study Group by Mary Kaszynski
Waste and inefficiency in defense contracts has resulted in the loss of billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the recently released final report of the Commission on Wartime Contracting. The report, which highlights the need to improve oversight and transparency, caused contingency contracting to move up the list of targets as a target for cost-saving reforms. But while all eyes are on wartime contracting, we may be losing sight of the bigger picture – the total cost.
9-6-11
Notes from Afghanistan Part III: The War is Going Badly
Afghanistan Study Group by Edward Kenney
For months groups like the Afghanistan Study Group, where I work, have argued that the claims of progress made repeatedly in the American media are not backed by facts and data. Casualty rates are increasing, and security incidents are on the upsurge. Defenders of the U.S. policy would claim violence and attacks are not a good measure of success or failure —an argument, which boiled down amounts to: insecurity is a bad measure of insecurity.
ARTICLES
9-4-11
A decade after the 9/11 attacks, Americans live in an era of endless war
Washington Post by Greg Jaffe
Today, radical religious ideologies, new technologies and cheap, powerful weapons have catapulted the world into “a period of persistent conflict,” according to the Pentagon’s last major assessment of global security. “No one should harbor the illusion that the developed world can win this conflict in the near future,” the document concludes. By this logic, America’s wars are unending and any talk of peace is quixotic or naive.
9-6-11
Afghan Army Attracts Few Where Fear Reigns
New York Times by Ray Rivera
Despite years of efforts to increase the enlistment of southern Pashtuns, an analysis of recruitment patterns by The New York Times shows that the number of them joining the army remains relatively minuscule, reflecting a deep and lingering fear of the insurgents, or sympathy for them, as well as doubts about the stability and integrity of the central government in Kabul, the capital.
9-8-11
Many Afghans Shrug at ‘This Event Foreigners Call 9/11′
Wall Street Journal by Yaroslav Trofimov
The events of Sept. 11, 2001, of course, are known to educated Afghans, and to many residents of big cities. But that isn’t always the case elsewhere in a predominantly rural country where 42% of the population is under the age of 14, and 72% of adults are illiterate.
Afghanistan’s civilian surge comes with enormous price tag and uncertain results
National Journal by Yochi Dreazen
Add some new numbers to the eye-popping price tag of the unpopular Afghan war: $2 billion, which is the total cost of the Obama administration’s ongoing surge of civilian officials into Afghanistan, and $500,000, which what it costs taxpayers to deploy each federal employee to the war zone for a single year.
OPINION
9-7-11
It’s Time to Rethink Counterterrorism Spending
Bloomberg Businessweek by Romesh Ratnesar
Judged solely on outcomes, the decade-long war on terrorism has been a rousing success. That success, however, has not come cheaply. The conflict in Afghanistan is now the longest military engagement in American history. More than 6,000 service members have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and upwards of 40,000 seriously wounded. The Congressional Research Service estimates the price tag of the two wars to be at least $1.3 trillion and counting…And U.S. economic growth in the decade since Sept. 11 has been the slowest since the 1930s.
9-8-11
US response to 9/11 contributed to causes of current debt crisis
The most economically costly decision post 9/11 was not whether to attack Iraq and Afghanistan, but how to pay for the ensuing conflicts and the related increases in defense and homeland security. War costs always linger well after the last shot has been fired. But this is especially true of the Iraq-Afghanistan conflicts. The $1.6 trillion or so already spent has been financed wholly through borrowing.
