US War of Terror: Success, failure or a complete debt

US War of Terror: Success, failure or a complete debt

US launched the war on terror almost a decade ago when a bunch of Al-Qaeda-backed terrorists attacked their skyscraper, the World Trade Center and military headquarters, the Pentagon. First Afghanistan and then Iraq became the targets of the most powerful country in the world.

It has been more than 10 years that the US attacked Afghanistan in search of the Al-Qaeda leaders and has it been a success?  Well it is a long debate in itself, however, the aftermaths of the decision taken by the Bush-administration have devoured the modern global economy.

The world has become a global village, and it was a message that became clear to the whole world when the recession that started at the Wall Street in 2008 spread all over the world like an air-borne epidemic.

The US of A started the war on terror within a month as police-like assaults on the reported location of the terrorist organization’s leadership but that economically effective campaign was decommissioned later in 2002 when America commenced air strikes.

Since that day, the US military has been allotted a big chunk of the national budget. Donald Rumsfield had announced earlier in 2001 that the US military budget will be cut short with lesser soldiers and cheaper weapons. However, that mission was quickly called-off by dishing out around $700 Billion to the armed forces in 2002. Approximately the same amount of money was spent on social security issues in the previous decade.

The most astonishing aspect of all this spending is that the government made all these transactions on the national credit card.

In 1999, the Bill Clinton administration had a surplus of $550 Billion and in 2009 the US debt had skyrocketed to a whopping $3.5 Trillion.

More than 70,000 allied troops have been wounded in the operation of the last 10 years. Considering the future veteran benefits costs and the military spending coupled with the future interest on the loans taken, the current debt on the US is amount in the close proximity of $5 Trillion. That means every citizen in the country is indebted to $16,000 every day.

The financial deficit might be calculated by crunching some numbers but where would someone calculate the loss incurred by the deaths of more than 6,000 American soldiers, 2,300 contractors and countless Afghan police officers, law enforcement personnel and citizens.

Around 18 veterans are committing suicide in the US everyday on average. More than 600,000 disability claims have been made at veteran hospitals and all this is still counting.

Posted by Fahad Awan on Oct 15 2011. Filed under USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry