So Afghanistan Was All About The Money - How The US Military Got Rich From Afghanistan

19th August 2021

‘How the US military got rich from Afghanistan' - Read Andrew Cockburn's latest piece in the Spectator.

The departure of American troops from Afghanistan is being lamented (or hailed — see the Chinese press, passim) as a defeat. But this is a shortsighted attitude, at least from the point of view of the US military and the multitude of interested parties who feed at its trough. For them, the whole adventure has been a thumping success, as measured in the trillions of taxpayer dollars that have flowed through their budgets and profits over the two decades in which they successfully maintained the operation.

The truth of this was forcefully brought home to me once by a friend of mine who, as a mid-level staffer, attended a conclave of senior generals discussing Donald Trump's Afghan mini-surge back in 2018. As he related the conversation, they were unanimous that the move would make absolutely no difference to the war, ‘but,' they happily agreed, ‘it will do us good at budget time'.

Read it HERE

See also this interview from the Spectator -
Click at 39 minutes in to see the Afghanistan section.

The fallout from the withdrawal is huge but there are now hundreds of contractors stuck in many places with nowhere to go. See
Contractors who powered U.S. war in Afghanistan stuck in Dubai