Our fourth branch of government, the Pentagon has, in a paroxysm of unlikely candor, reported that it has indirectly funded the enemy in Afghanistan with $360 million. Your tax money the Taliban and its supporters used to kill American military personnel. As part of the Obamatron's nation building effort in a land far, far away the US has awarded $31 billion in contracts to Afghan businesses to give the backward country a modern economy. Eventually some of this money has ended up in the hands of people tied into the Taliban or criminal networks. Task Force 2010 is the military's best effort to get an estimate of how much military spending has been diverted to the enemy or stolen. Most of the money was lost to profiteering, bribery and extortion with half flowing through one contract, "Host Nation Trucking". A warlord named "Rohullah" received $1.7 million in protection payments because he controls the highway between Kabul and Kandahar, the two largest cities in Afghanistan. If payments up to $1500 per truck were not made to "Rohullah" the convoys were attacked by his soldiers of fortune. No doubt the Pentagon's estimate of money wasted in Afghanistan is far too low.
The US spends$50 million to kill one Taliban fighter according to a simple calculation. How is that metric possible, you ask in disbelief? Consider one cogent example. In the Tangi Valley earlier this month a single Taliban fighter living in the field on flatbread and goat, armed with a surplus RPG, shot down a CH-47 helicopter (cost new, $32 million; renovated, $8.5 million) carrying 38 US and Afghan soldiers. Thirty Americans died in the crash, including elite SEAL commandos, (cost to train each: $1 million, approximately) making it the deadliest single action in the ten year war. The US retaliated of course, but it took an international manhunt and an F-16 sortie (cost to fly: around $5,000/hr.) to kill the fighter and his small unit leader. Millions for warlords and warmongers, not a dollar for working people at home.