America’s Shocking Dilemma in Afghanistan

The cover of the latest edition of Time magazine shows an 18-year-old Afghan woman whose nose and ears were chopped off by order of the Taliban. She was punished for having escaped from her husband’s house. Beside the photo, the title suggests the position of the magazine: “What happens if we leave Afghanistan?” That is to say that, for this publication, the American presence in this country is a guarantee that, in some form, the barbarity of the Taliban will be fought.

The editor, Richard Stengel, who decided to publish the photo on the cover, argued, “But bad things do happen to people, and it is part of our job to confront and explain them. In the end, I felt that the image is a window into the reality of what is happening — and what can happen — in a war that affects and involves all of us.”

But the “emotional truth” of the war in Afghanistan, which Stengel wanted to convey with his initiative, hardly rivals the brutality of some impressive data that Nicholas Kristoff, columnist for The New York Times, has just published. Kristoff shows that the so-called “war on terror” is already the most expensive war in U.S. history — outside the Second World War. And the current president, Barack Obama, a Democrat, will spend more than his predecessor, George W. Bush, on the conflict.

Moreover, says Kristoff, the United States already spends more on the military than at the peak of the Cold War, the Vietnam War or the Korean War. The U.S. Navy, for example, has a fleet larger than the combined fleet of the 13 countries following it in the ranking. On the other hand, the United States is no longer the country with the highest proportion of young college graduates; it is now in 12th place.

The U.S. spends a lot and spends it poorly. The annual cost of a single American soldier in Afghanistan would be enough to build 20 schools in the country — which, according to Kristoff would be more effective to counteract extremism in the region. “Education can actually transform a nation.”

And then we return to the photo of the mangled Afghan woman and to the American dilemma: as the picture shows, the war might be necessary. On the other hand, nine days of fighting in Afghanistan cost the equivalent of all the money spent in the War of Independence — and the conflict only gets worse. For this reason, we should ask, as Kristoff does, “Mr. Obama, isn’t it time to rebalance our priorities?”