Blood and Treasure
Twenty years of war in Afghanistan cost over 241,000 lives and $2.26 trillion
The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, at Brown University, has a “Costs of War” website which presents “U.S. Costs to Date for the War in Afghanistan, in $ Billions, 2001-2021” (published in April 2021). The cost in blood and treasure is immense. A link to the web page is at bottom; first, some highlights:
- Through April 2021, the U.S. “has spent $2.26 trillion on the war, which includes operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
- Almost a quarter of the cost is on “Interest on War Borrowing to Date.”
- The Institute estimates that “241,000 people have died as a direct result of this war,” not including deaths “caused by disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences.”
- Total civilian deaths top 71,000.
No comment is necessary, and none is given except that figures from at least May through August 2021 will eventually be added to this.
[Edit, made April 8, 2022: the Watson Institute link originally cited below is down, so an alternate link at Military.com is given below it.]
The link: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2021
The Military.com link: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/04/16/bill-afghanistan-war-226-trillion-and-still-rising.html
From The Narthex
The Statistical Yearbook of the Church states that there are 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide. These…
Hannah Arendt contended, and controversially, that the source of what she called “the banality of…
In Catholic circles the concept of natural law is fairly familiar. I say “fairly” because…
