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Well, because the project isn't warfare as such. The project is wealth transfer from public to private hands via something that looks like war. Yet more sociali
by maybelsyrup 5y ago
Well, because the project isn't warfare as such. The project is wealth transfer from public to private hands via something that looks like war. Yet more socialism for the ultra-wealthy, in other words. In this incentive structure, spending more than needed is the point.
While it wouldn't be true to say that the US hasn't had "military goals" in Afghanistan, I'd make the claim that these were never really the point. Like most of the defense budget, this has been about enriching a specific sector of the American elite, and by that metric they've succeeded tremendously. In fact, judging from the media reaction to the US leaving the past ten days, they seem to have thought it'd last a lot longer than 20 years.
- bsedlm 5y agoOr in the case of Iraq and the war on terror, wealth transfer from everything and everybody in that region back to the private owners of the military-industrial apparatus.
- adventured 5y agoIraqi is back to pumping record oil flows and its GDP per capita is already back to being higher than Jordan, Ukraine, Egypt, Indonesia or the Philippines. It's not terribly far away from Colombia or South Africa. How does that represent Iraq's wealth being transferred to the military industrial complex? The exact opposite happened. The US lost enormous sums of money and also didn't keep or take Iraq's oil (which is the extreme majority of their national wealth). The US has absolutely nothing economically to show for its ridiculously dumb attempt to nation build influence in Iraq. If the US wanted a forever stable supply of Iraqi oil, Saddam would have happily arranged that, even at an under the (OPEC) table discount. China will be by far the biggest economic beneficiary of both the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. They're going to partner with the Taliban and mine the heck out of Afghanistan, and they'll buy a lot of Iraqi oil. So what's the premise, we did both wars at the behest of China, because the US is now the puppet of China? I get it, we did it for China for the oil! In 2019 Iraq exported $74b of crude. $21b of that went to China, $19b went to India. $6b went to the US. So the US spent trillions of dollars to secure an annual $6b flow of oil, which could have trivially been secured from Saddam (and a lot more than that)? Nope. That's not why the US invaded Iraq at all.
- xxpor 5y ago>In 2019 Iraq exported $74b of crude. $21b of that went to China, $19b went to India. $6b went to the US. Wait, that's it?? $74 billion in the grand scheme of things is... not much. If you'd asked me to guess I'd have expected something like $500 billion or more.
- bsedlm 5y ago> The US lost enormous sums of money note that the USA's fed can create money by decree.
- opinion-is-bad 5y agoAlso note that doing so creates inflationary pressure on all dollars in existence, essentially taxing everyone that holds $USD.