November 30, 2009
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$3.6 Billion
Adding 35,000 troops to Afghanistan will cost $3.6 billion per month for us taxpayers. Here is the link: Link
Would you rather the $3.6 billion a month be spent in Afghanistan or here in the U.S.?
Adding 35,000 troops to Afghanistan will cost $3.6 billion per month for us taxpayers. Here is the link: Link
Would you rather the $3.6 billion a month be spent in Afghanistan or here in the U.S.?
Comments (86)
definitely here. The fact they have discovered $2.4 TRILLION in wasteful defense spending makes all these numbers with money just ridiculous…
HERE.
signed,
And_I_love,
formerly Loonsounds
Right here in the States, please. The sooner we get out of these incredibly wasteful wars, the better.
Who started this spending spree on war anyway?
Let’s fix our problems. We can fix the rest of the world later.
depends on how the money will be spent here, but either way, it’s still a staggering figure and i think the gov’t should stabilize our own country before we do anything too drastic in other countries.
In Afgani. There is no better way to spend money than to spend it on killing Muslims.
A nuke costs… what… 2 million? Problem solved.
@tendollar4ways - you said that really? are you twins?
@crystal_air - Not really.
This is a touchy subject for me, I’m still pissed off with Obama for this one….
Lets just view the Right-wing to think about this…
Spending on the military is super Patriotic
Spending on domestic stuff is socialism
so I guess spending it in Afghanistan is the Patriotic thing to do…
That assumes that they would spend it here assuming there was no war. I think that since it’s money we don’t really have that if they did not have to spend it on the war they would probably not spend it at all. I mean it’s one thing to say to the people we need money to support our soldiers so we are going to borrow some. It’s another to say we want money to provide welfare assistance to those with no or low income so we are going to borrow some. It has been my experience that people tend to care enough about soldiers to borrow money to support them but they tend not to care quite so much about low or no income people.
@tendollar4ways - Ha, ha! Yeah.
here
In America.
it feels like paying bills – but honestly, it’s not like we just
happened to find ourselves there. so given that we have a
responsibility to “finish the job” AND this money will actually do
that… then hey, better pay up, right?
and i hate bringing up this topic because i know it starts up these
long discussions that just go in circles, but there are other countries
in the world getting significant amounts of US aid (“The Congressional
Research Service’s conservative estimate of total
cumulative US aid to Israel (not adjusted for inflation) from 1949
through 2009 is $106.1647 billion”), so really, i think ultimately it’s
a matter of sitting down like any normal family experiencing a downturn
and seeing what we can afford, what we can’t, and how best to adjust to
less income coming in.
(and just to pre-empt bringing up israel: i’m not suggesting that we
must stop sending money asap – just that when it comes to financial
planning, israel shouldn’t be untouchable… we need to objectively
analyze how much needs to be sent and work from there.)
can you just like…give ME the money????
yeahyeah new shoes!
@tendollar4ways - “In Afgani. There is no better way to spend money than to spend it on killing Muslims.”
good attitude.
that’s what the terrorists are saying too… just about american men, women, and children. hurts more then, right?
i’m fine with you saying you wnat terrorists/extremists dead… but not muslims in general, cuz hey, that’s an incredibly ignorant statement and yes, uncalled for.
what’s more, i sorta like life most of the time.
I’d have to see a further breakdown of the expenditure.
here.
I think it should be left in the hands of the taxpayers to be spent as they see fit.
No contest. At least spending it here would buy something that could last, like what our grandparents and greatgrandparents did. War is just a rathole when it comes to money. You spend it and have nothing to show.
@novimi - You should come by my site sometime.
Here of course
@And_I_love - What is sick is there are alot of a-holes with that very opinion.
In California please…we’re broke!!
@tendollar4ways - especially around xanga, and they won’t recognize your sarcastic comment as being such. I just remembered your views, that is the only reason I questioned that comment.
So…. How did your birthday go….?
Articulate as usual. Not.
omg. HERE of course. wtf
That 3.6 billion would be better served in my pocket.
what the hell. i thought obama going into the office would mean that the troops in afghanistan are withdrawn…
If only we could go back in time and stop the government from spending all the unnecessary money they spent on the Iraq War (or how about find another way to get Saddam out that wouldn’t throw us into all this crap). But we can’t.
Ummm…it would depend. I’m not too up to date on how important it is for us to still be in Afghanistan. I understood why we went in there originally but now I’m not so sure about the importance of us staying in. But if us pulling out would make things worse than us staying and fighting will, then spend it over there. But if we’re just going to cause greater problems for the Afghani people, then we need to spend it over here and get our economy back in shape.
@sojinxpics - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/17/barack-obama-iraq-withdrawal-afghanistan
Yes, he said that but he gave the timetable of “by the end of 2011″ for pulling troops out of Afghanistan. He says he wants to try to stop the Taliban completely first. It was only Iraq that we were supposed to pull out of.
If you think that’s a lot, check out the healthcare bill.
Wrong decision is better than indecision… Obama.
I would prefer it not to be spent at all. Fix our debt and stop spending.
tendollar4ways- Isn’t that what Hitler said about jews?
You are a fucking idiot……………….
Well, we just got the healthcare bill, and the government spends plenty on healthcare in general (Medicaid, Medicare, etc.), and we got the stimulus package. This is not to say we’re not spending plenty overseas. It’s a somewhat misleading question though. More like, “Where are we getting all the money and how much can we actually spend?”
It’s a complicated matter. It’s not just about Afghanistan but Pakistan as well, which has an extremely weak government and nuclear weapons. As much as I would like the troops to come home, I’m not particularly surprised by the decision considering the lack of troops from the very beginning due to the focus on Iraq. I don’t think it is fair for the president to take all the blame for Afghanistan considering a corrupt government in Afghanistan, a weak partner in Pakistan, and the emotional circumstances from 9/11 that started it all. Some things such as Afghanistan are just out of the president’s hands, unlike Iraq, which was just incompetence and a highly skewed, manipulative, interpretation of intelligence.
@tendollar4ways - sorry about that! lately, people have been serious when they make comments like the one you wrote earlier, so i jumped to conclusions. (fail) my apologies again.
Here!
HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Perhaps you should ask the Bush administration this question. After all they are the ones who got us into this catch 22. The bastards should rot in hell, if there actually was such a place.
so none of our soldiers lives are worth that amount of money? Man I just lost faith in xanga…
Oh seriously. Like anyone would actually PREFER that our money go elsewhere. I’m sure we’d all PREFER it to be spent here, on ourselves and what we all need.
The real question is where SHOULD it go.
^^^That’s my way of avoiding an actual answer. :p
~V
@Paul_Partisan - haaaa!
I guess that would depend on how that money would be used. If we make good use of the money there but would just squander it here then over there by all means.
@novimi - he was totally being sarcastic he is as liberal as they get
I don’t know enough about how the money will be spent.
i don’t care. either way it is not for my benefit.
i just did some math. $4b/35k troops = $115k/troop i don’t think each additional troop is worth $115k/month. i say run out all the contractors. then we can talk about $4b.
here. better yet, like what noree_n said, just gimmie all the money! yay (:
Keep the money here!
There’s a war going on?!
probably not really wasted there,,, a lot maybe,,, not near the waste weve got here tho,,, for dollar value,, probably better spunt in the war….
if we kill em all,,, far better than producing one more chevrolet,,, lets get our prioities straight…
In the U.S., of course!
the best bet however would be to quit spending money everywhere,,, eliminate taxes,,, and let the economy grow again…
tax and spend,,, is an artificial set of handcuffs on the economy….
it aint like nobody,,, or no business wants to be open for business in the us….
War is expensive.
I like that you’re using a picture of the Soviet Army. They learned the Afghanistan lesson, as did the British. Personally I view that country as a giant black hole for military effort and resources. It will devour everything you throw at it and in the end you will have little or nothing to show for. I predict that in say 10 years from now historians will look back and say that this was one of the key mistakes Obama made.
If you want to make a serious change in a country like that, you occupy it with a million man army and you kill anyone who disagrees with you. You establish totalitarian rule over the populace and spend several decades remolding their society and brain washing and indoctrinating their youth to follow your system. Only then I think would you see a substantial and lasting change. Alas, that’s not a viable option in this situation.
Whatever though, it’s not my money…oh wait I guess it is.
here.
Until our men and women fighting overseas come home, definitely Afghanistan. But I would like to see this war end.
here
but it’s for a good cause here
i rather it be spent there actually doing something than wasting it on something here
the nation’s been complaining about inaction or something hasn’t it?
Here…specifically directly to me. lol, jk.
PEN15
There because the sooner they get this done, the sooner we can stop funding the war. And to someone who said nuke, do you believe that all the innocent people that haven’t taken up arms, that do what they can do for peace, should either leave their homes and history… or just be microwaved with the rest of them?
@rafi09 - thanks for the link and clarifying that!
i agree, the united states is in pretty bad shape, and we could work on getting ourselves back on two feet. i say withdraw all the troops asap.
I’d really rather we just pull out of the wars completely and bring the troops back. But, that’s just me. :p
I think we are spending money we really don’t have so it seems that the faster we can do the job and get out the better off we will be. ‘Until then we’re just another day older and deeper in debt’.
Afghanistan is a lost cause. Everybody’s known that since like the 70′s, US has been there for almost a decade now and there haven’t been any colossal changes, so why the hell are they still there? Is it to find Bin Laden? cuz for all we know, he’s probably sitting in someone’s basement playing World of Warcraft as a level 4 Magi. There is no helping, changing or stopping extremists and people with radical and destructive views. Islamic extremist groups are even more pissed off that America won’t leave and the fact that more troops are being sent in, which is why the violence is increasing, rather than decreasing. And yeah, soldiers and troops are brave and good people for fighting, but in my opinion, people should stop enlisting in the army at this point, because nobody’s being forced to go to war. There is no conscription like the World Wars. Maybe when Obama said, “change we can believe in” what he really meant was a change that further supports Bush’s policies LOL.
@TheGiantSlayer - People have been trying to ‘get things done’ in Afghanistan since the 1970′s.. the Soviet was a very powerful country and yet they couldn’t change anything about Afghanistan despite the occupation. Same with the Brits. US has been in Afghanistan since 2001.. don’t you think if something could be done, it would’ve happened by now? or even some sort of a positive inclination towards a change? And thousands of civilians and innocent children are ALREADY dead, dying, homeless or orphans in Afghanistan. It’s been that way for decades. If they don’t get killed by violence between the troops and the extremists then they die due to the corrupt government system or simply the oppressive regime in the country. It’s very very sad and if US was as keen on helping Afghanistan as they claim, they would realize the reality and change the failed strategy..
how about don’t spend it at all! Let us taxpayers keep it. $3.6billion/month, that’s around $144/year for every person in America to keep. Sounds good enough for me.
Pay Canada for putting up with your bullshit
. No really, there should be no more money going towards the war. Just end it already.
It’s all fake money anyway.
@novimi - No worries…What is sad is there is THAT sentiment in this country. Many people would chose killing a muslim over helping the poor our own country. The fact it is so widespread is appauling. The fact that the major religion of this country promotes this kind of thinking is down right scary.
Afghanistan. lol
neither. dude, money is pathetic.
Definitely here. It should be obvious to the government that these wars are becoming ridiculous. 35,000 troops, and no one knows how many of them will come back.
Iraq was supposed to be a 4 month operation. Now look where we are: 8 years.
unfortunately tiger woods will get way more attention than this ever will
well of course here but that would be if they could have our soldiers come back safely and not have the Taliban come into power again.
Spend the money here! Let them fight their own wars!
Freedom or democracy is only for those who want it and are willing to fight for it. The Afghan people obviously don’t want it. So why should we fight for it for them?
Read my newest blog Dan. Seriously.
We don’t have the option of spending it here at home. WE HAVE TO AID OUR TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN. Period.
We have ignored them for too long, and thats why we’ve been fighting this war for 8 years. At least Obama is offering us some what of an exit strategy.
Who asks this kind of question?? Would you rather have a dollar or that kid have a dollar? Uh.. me, I want that damn dollar.
You wanna explain why? Because I guarantee if they decided not to spend that money in Afghanistan they’d find something far less useful to spend it on over here. It’s called a person spending money they didn’t earn on something that isn’t for them, so they care neither about the price nor the quality of that item. The government is a 3rd person buyer.
At least you know in Afghanistan that is protecting the interest of those who make stupid decisions so they will at least do what seems most logical. Other then someone in DC making the decision of whether or not California should have more bubble gum machines. (And at this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if they passed a bill about bubble gum machines)
I think we need to finish what we started over there. As much as I would love to spend it here, it needs to be done. We went into war with them and now we need to finish it and help them rebuild. If not, terrorism will only get worse from other countries.
i think we should put that money towards bringing them back