This war so far has cost us $125 billion and counting, because largely we decided to do it on our own, with only the United Kingdom as a paying, fully participating partner.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Well, where is the money? Show me the money? Our allies have put up a few billion dollars, but the American taxpayer has been required to shoulder the burden of this war.
For the first time in history, we declared war without financing it. Americans have not been asked to pay for it through taxes.
War is not cheap, but it's the human cost that's the highest.
There's a financial cost, but the only costs that are ever real are the costs of our soldiers.
As costs mount, in lives and dollars, it is natural to second guess, but one lesson I hope we have learned is that the U.S. cannot go it alone in a policy that leaves American troops taking all the risk and American taxpayers paying all of the costs.
If we finally chose as a country to take responsibility for the wars that we believe we must engage in, and rather than borrow money to exercise that authority to go to war, we actually pay for these wars, that would save us over a trillion dollars, because that's what we have spent in Iraq and Afghanistan - all through borrowed money.
We've suffered a war, and one thing we know: Whenever our nation's faced war, whether it was in the 1980s when we were winning the Cold War or in the 1940s during World War II, the responsible thing to do has been to borrow money to win the war.
But the thing we do know is whatever it costs to save and protect American lives in this conflict, we're going to spend.
As a combat veteran, I know the cost of war.
A trillion dollars spent, 2,000 American lives lost - Afghanistan is the longest war in American history. But you don't hear a word about it.
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