On Friday, October 7, the United States reached  grim milestone. This date marked the ten year anniversary of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.  During this period of time over 1,700 American service men and women have been killed,  thousands more have been wounded and maimed, and the cost to the taxpayers has exceeded one trillion dollars.  In addition to American losses, tens of thousands of Afghan men, women and children have met their demise.  U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan has now exceeded the ten year involvement in the War in …

After almost ten years of  U.S.  involvement in Afghanistan,  the American people have almost nothing to show for their spent treasure,  spilled blood, and thousands of disabled sons and daughters.  Not only is the war against  the Taliban insurgents going badly, but the entire Afghan economy has become totally dependent on the billions of dollars of military spending, combined with billions more in civilian economic assistance.   In fact, The World Bank has estimated that 97 percent of Afghanistan’s anemic economic output is from spending related to the international military and …

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For those of us asking if things could possibly get any worse (or more expensive) for the U.S. in Afghanistan, the answer is a resounding “yes”.  The owners of  Kabul Bank, many of whom are related to Afghan president Hamid Karsai, announced yesterday that the bank would almost certainly collapse as result of millions of dollars of investment & loan losses, combined with millions more stolen by the banks’ directors.  The news of Kabul Bank’s financial problems has, predictably, brought about  a panic among depositors, anxious to withdraw …