$1tn cost of longest US war hastens retreat from military intervention - Financial Times

The Afghanistan war, the longest overseas conflict in American history, has cost the US taxpayer nearly $1tn and will require spending several hundred billion dollars more after it officially ends this month, according to Financial Times calculations and independent researchers.

Around 80 per cent of that spending on the Afghanistan conflict has taken place during the presidency of Barack Obama, who sharply increased the US military presence in the country after taking office in 2009.

The enormous bill for the 13-year conflict, which has never been detailed by the government, will add to the pervasive scepticism about the war in the US, where opinion polls show a majority of Americans believe it was a bad idea.

With the Iraq war having already cost the US $1.7tn, according to one study, the bill from the Afghanistan conflict is an important factor in the broader reluctance among the American public and the Obama administration to intervene militarily in other parts of the world — including sending troops back to Iraq.

John Sopko, the government’s special inspector-general for Afghanistan, whose organisation monitors the more than $100bn that has been spent on reconstruction projects in the country, said that “billions of dollars” of those funds had been wasted or stolen on projects that often made little sense for the conditions in Afghanistan.

“We simply cannot lose this amount of money again,” he said. “The American people will not put up with it.”

Adjusted for inflation, Mr Sopko said the amount the US had spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan was more than the cost of the Marshall Plan to rebuild western Europe.

“Time and again, I am running into people from USAID, State and the Pentagon who think they are in Kansas [not Afghanistan],” he said. “My auditors tell me things [about spending plans] and I say, ‘you have to be making this up, this is Alice in Wonderland’.”

The Nato military operation in Afghanistan, which started shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and which has been spearheaded by the US, will come to a melancholy close at the end of December with the Taliban insurgency still strong, although it does not hold any major cities.

Under current plans, about 10,000 US troops will remain in the country until 2016, although the administration is under growing pressure to extend their presence because of worries about a Taliban resurgence once the US departs.

Since 2001, the government has appropriated $765bn for the war in Afghanistan, the vast bulk for the defence department but also including some spending at the state department.  Read More at  FT.com

$1tn cost of longest US war hastens retreat from military intervention