Nicholas Kristoff: War On Terror “Gross Miscalculation Of Resources”

Posted by | July 29, 2010 10:33 | Filed under: Top Stories


With a h/t to Greg Mitchell, Nicholas Kristoff points toward what we really should be focused on if we want to clean up the economy. Except for World War II, the so-called “war on terror” is the costliest war in our history.

Those historical comparisons should be a wake-up call to President Obama, underscoring how our military strategy is not only a mess — as the recent leaked documents from Afghanistan suggested — but also more broadly reflects a gross misallocation of resources. One legacy of the 9/11 attacks was a distortion of American policy: By the standards of history and cost-effectiveness, we are hugely overinvested in military tools and underinvested in education and diplomacy.

And our liberal, anti-war president is requesting a 6.1% increase in military spending. It is projected when we get out of these wars military spending will go down, but it goes up first.

At the moment, the administration projects that the Pentagon’s base budget and the extra war spending will peak at $708 billion in the coming fiscal year, though analysts say it is likely that the Pentagon will need at least $30 billion more in supplemental war financing then.

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Copyright 2010 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.

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