Analysis of newly released US Defense Department figures shows that the US has now spent more than $1 trillion on the war on terror prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bloomberg reports that spending growth on Afghanistan operations helped push the Pentagon over the $1 trillion mark and that doesn't include the billions the US spends on intelligence, replacement weapons systems and construction which would stretch spending out over several years.
According to the Congressional Research Service, we are probably going to have to double that trillion dollar figure over the next 10 years.
The extraordinary part is that the US is now spending more fighting terrorism than it was in the year that followed the 9/11 attacks. And of course, there has been absolutely no cost benefit analysis of whether that spending has delivered results.
As Brian Katulis, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress told the New York Times: "Do we really need to be spending $120 billion (the money spent in Afghanistan this year) in a country with a G.D.P. that's one-sixth that size?" Think of the roads and hospitals it could build, think of the jobs it could create for America's army of unemployed.
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