Friday, October 16, 2009
A million-dollar man
From a purely fiscal advantage, it’s not difficult to understand why some in Washington are calling for a shift in war policy in Afghanistan and placing the onus on the Afghan army instead of America’s sophisticated, and expensive, military. The Defense Department is currently burning through $15 million an hour on U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the winding down operation in Iraq. In Afghanistan, it costs $1 million a year to keep each American soldier in place, whereas it only costs $12,000 annually for each Afghan soldier.
Pulling out large numbers of U.S. personnel and letting Afghan troops fight the Taliban would save billions of dollars for the Pentagon, which already is facing rising non-war costs in its future budgets. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Defense Department will need to spend $567 billion annually beginning in 2010 on all of its operations (excluding Afghanistan and Iraq). That’s $33 billion more than the Obama administration has requested.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
CBO Forecasts Rising Defense Costs (by Megan Scully, Government Executive)
Long-Term Implications of the Department of Defense’s Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Submission (Congressional Budget Office)
Comments