Opposition to the 2001 Afghanistan War

Opposition to the decade-long Afghanistan war

War in Afghanistan (2001–present)

The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...

stems from numerous factors - these include the view that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was illegal under international law and constituted an unjustified aggression, the view that the continued military presence constitutes a foreign military occupation, the view that the war does little to prevent terrorism but increases its likelihood, and views on the involvement of geo-political and corporate interests. Also giving rise to oppposition to the war are the high level of civilian casualties, the cost to taxpayers, the decades of war inflicted on Afghans, the length of the war to date, and the estimates by many that it could last for many more decades.

Disputed legality of the U.S. invasion

Opponents of the war have long claimed that the attack on Afghanistan was illegal under international law

International law

Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...

, constituted unjustified aggression

War of aggression

A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense usually for territorial gain and subjugation. The phrase is distinctly modern and diametrically opposed to the prior legal international standard of "might makes right", under...

and would lead to the deaths of many civilians through the bombing campaign and by preventing humanitarian aid

Humanitarian aid

Humanitarian aid is material or logistical assistance provided for humanitarian purposes, typically in response to humanitarian crises including natural disaster and man-made disaster. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity...

workers from bringing food into the country. By one estimate, around 5,000 Afghan civilians had been killed within just the first three months of the U.S. invasion.

More broadly, the invasion of Afghanistan appeared to opponents to be a stepping stone to the 2003 Iraq War, increasing the geo-political reach of the United States.

Involvement in an Afghan civil war

Opposition also stems from the view that the U.S.-led military forces are taking sides in an ongoing civil war

Civil war

A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....

in Afghanistan between its ethnic groups, backing minority Tajiks

Tajiks

Tajik is a general designation for a wide range of Persian-speaking people of Iranic origin, with traditional homelands in present-day Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan...

and Uzbeks

Uzbeks

The Uzbeks are a Turkic ethnic group in Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Pakistan, Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China...

against the Pashtun

Pashtun people

Pashtuns or Pathans , also known as ethnic Afghans , are an Eastern Iranic ethnic group with populations primarily between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan...

majority of Afghanistan.

Several weeks into a massive U.S.-led military offensive against the Taliban in four southern Afghan provinces in 2006, Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai, GCMG is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001...

spoke against the killing of so many Afghan citizens:

According to journalist Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid is a former Pakistani revolutionary, a journalist and best-selling author of several books about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia.-Biography:...

, the noted author of several books on Afghanistan, the Taliban are in the fabric of that country, and defeating the Taliban would involve killing "large numbers of Pashtuns", an ethnic group with a long history in southeastern Afghanistan.

Afghan civilian opposition to the invasion

One of the best-known women's organization in Afghanistan, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan is a women's organization based in Quetta, Pakistan, that promotes women's rights and secular democracy...

(RAWA), condemned the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, stating that "America ... has launched a vast aggression on our country".

They accused the U.S. and its allies of "paying the least attention to the fate of democracy in Afghanistan" by first having supported for years a "Jehadis-fostering, Osama-fostering and Taliban-fostering" policy before the 2001 U.S. invasion, only to now be "sharpening the dagger of the Northern Alliance" warlords and drug lords that were key allies of the U.S. in its invasion.

Afghan opposition leader Abdul Haq

Abdul Haq (Afghan leader)

Abdul Haq was an Afghan Pashtun mujahideen commander who fought against the Soviets and Afghan communists during the Soviet-Afghan War...

also opposed U.S. military action in his country. In a November 2, 2001 article "US Bombs Are Boosting the Taliban" published just days before he was killed, he argued that any military action against the Taliban should be carried out by Afghans, not Americans.

Afghan civilian casualties

A very large factor in opposition to the war in Afghanistan are the deaths of innocent Afghan civilians, with thousands currently being killed each year as a result of the war.

The decade-long war in Afghanistan has caused the deaths of thousands of Afghan civilians directly from insurgent and foreign military action, as well as the deaths of possibly tens of thousands of Afghan civilians indirectly as a consequence of displacement, starvation, disease, exposure, lack of medical treatment, crime and lawlessness resulting from the war.

Coalition military casualties

The continued and mounting death tolls of foreign military forces in the decade-long war are another factor involved in the opposition to the war in Afghanistan, with hundreds currently dying per year. By October 2011, the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion, over 2,750 foreign soldiers had been killed in the war in Afghanistan.

International public opinion

International public opinion is largely opposed to the war in Afghanistan. Polls around the world - including a 47-nation global survey in 2007, a 24-nation survey in 2008, both a 25-nation survey and a 13-nation survey in 2009, and a 22-nation survey in 2010 - have repeatedly shown considerable opposition to the presence of U.S. and NATO military troops in Afghanistan.

While support for the war in Afghanistan has been strongest in the United States and Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, recent polls have shown growing American opposition to the U.S. war, including majority opposition:

September 2009 - United States: Growing American opposition to the war in Afghanistan reached an all-time high, while support for the U.S. war fell to an all-time low in September. A record majority 58% of Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan, while only 39% support the U.S. war. The CNN - Opinion Research poll was conducted September 11–13, 2009.
September 2009 - United States: "Americans are broadly skeptical of President Obama's contention that the war in Afghanistan is necessary for the war against terrorism to be a success, and few see an increase in troops as the right thing to do." The plurality 42% of Americans want a reduction of the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Only 26% of Americans think more troops should be sent to Afghanistan. 51% of Americans think the war is not worth fighting, while 46% think it is. Fewer than half of Americans think winning the war in Afghanistan is necessary to win the "war on terrorism", with about as many saying it is not. The Washington Post - ABC News poll was conducted September 10–12, 2009.

International protests against the war

The ongoing decade-long war in Afghanistan

War in Afghanistan (2001–present)

The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...

has repeatedly been the subject of large protests around the world, with the first large-scale demonstrations beginning in the days leading up to the war's official launch on October 7, 2001 as U.S. "Operation Enduring Freedom".

Foreign military occupation

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In January 2009, an independent analysis by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a foreign-policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. The organization describes itself as being dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States...

in Washington, D.C. found that "the majority of Afghans are now deeply opposed to the foreign troops on their soil" and that the presence of a foreign occupier in Afghanistan is the single most important factor behind the Afghan insurgency.

The Taliban and the many other insurgent groups in Afghanistan also perceive the decade-long foreign military presence as an occupation. Taliban spokesman Yousef Ahmadi told journalist Anand Gopal, "We are fighting to free our country from foreign domination." He added, "Even the Americans once waged an insurgency to free their country."
On October 8, 2009, in a New York Times interview initiated by the White House, a senior White House official described the Afghan Taliban as an indigenous Afghan group that want to win back territory within their own country. The White House comment had come a day after the Taliban reasserted that their aim is "the obtainment of independence".

Foreign military raids of Afghan homes

A key and long-standing point of opposition to the war in Afghanistan has been the constant raids of Afghan homes by foreign military forces that have persisted despite long-repeated pleas and protests by the Afghan government.

In a visit to Washington in May 2005, Afghan President Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai, GCMG is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001...

asked U.S. President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

to let the Afghan government have authority over house search operations regularly conducted by the U.S.-led foreign military forces in his country. Bush rejected the Afghan president's request.

In September 2005, Karzai again tried asking the U.S.-led military forces for changes, saying: "Going into the Afghan homes - searching Afghan homes without the authorization of the Afghan government - is something that should stop now. No coalition forces should go into Afghan homes without the authorization of the Afghan government."

By the spring of 2006, mounting anger over the foreign military raids of Afghan homes, and accusations of foreign troops molesting women during the forced searches, helped prompt Afghan religious leaders to begin calling for armed resistance.

In a December 2008 speech, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that in the previous month he had again asked that the U.S. military in his country cooperate with his government, sending the U.S. government a list of demands about troop conduct in his country: "Part of that list was that they shouldn't, on their own, enter the houses of our people and bombard our villages and detain our people." He gave no indication of having received any response back from the U.S.

In November 2010, he yet again repeated his protest during a Washington Post interview: "The raids are a problem always. They were a problem then, they are a problem now. They have to go away. The Afghan people don't like these raids, if there is any raid it has to be done by the Afghan government within the Afghan laws. This is a continuing disagreement between us."

Destruction of Afghan homes and crops

In 2010, U.S.-led offensives inflicted more than $100 million in damage to Afghan homes and fruit crops in southern Kandahar province

Kandahar Province

Kandahar or Qandahar is one of the largest of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. It is located in southern Afghanistan, between Helmand, Oruzgan and Zabul provinces. Its capital is the city of Kandahar, which is located on the Arghandab River. The province has a population of nearly...

, according to an Afghan government report in January 2011. The government delegation led by President Hamid Karzai's advisor said that the foreign military forces had inflicted unreasonable damage and caused the displacement of many people.

Two months earlier, in November 2010, the Afghan Rights Monitor (ARM), a human rights group, also reported widespread damage of Afghan homes in the same three districts, Arghandab

Arghandab

Arghandab may refer to:* Arghandab District of Afghanistan.* Arghandab, Afghanistan, a town in the center of Arghandab District.* Arghandab River of Afghanistan....

, Zhari, and Panjwai, where tens of thousands of foreign forces had been carrying out military offensives over the past year.

Rejection of the terrorism argument

A Washington Post - ABC News poll in September 2009 reported that "Americans are broadly skeptical of President Obama's contention that the war in Afghanistan is necessary for the war against terrorism to be a success." Fewer than half of Americans think winning the war in Afghanistan is necessary to win the "war on terrorism", with about as many saying that it is not.

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A decade into the war, the Pew Research Center reported in September 2011 that the majority 75% of Americans do not think the war in Afghanistan has lessened the risk of terrorism in their country, and only a minority 25% thought it had. Far more Americans, the plurality 37%, think the U.S. war in Afghanistan has in fact increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks in the U.S.

A poll at the end of August 2009 found that three-quarters of Britons do not think fighting in Afghanistan makes British people, or British streets, any safer from terrorism, as Gordon Brown and senior ministers repeatedly told them to justify the war.

About a week and a half later, British member of parliament Eric Joyce

Eric Joyce

Eric Stuart Joyce is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Falkirk since 2005. Joyce served as a Private in the Black Watch before attending University and subsequently rejoining the army as a commissioned officer...

, a former army major, resigned as aide to Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth

Bob Ainsworth

Robert William Ainsworth is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Coventry North East since 1992, and was the Secretary of State for Defence from 2009 to 2010...

, saying "I do not think the public will accept for much longer that our losses can be justified by simply referring to the risk of greater terrorism on our streets."

In 2004, Jack Cloonan, a 25-year veteran of the FBI who served between 1996 and 2002 on the joint CIA–FBI task force that tracked bin Laden, said the number of people in Al Qaeda was "miniscule". A membership list found near Kabul in 2001 during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and obtained by the task force, showed there had been a grand total of 198 members in the organization.

With the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, al Qaeda elements moved to Pakistan and other countries.

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On October 8, 2009, in a New York Times interview initiated by the White House, a senior White House official acknowledged that there are fewer than 100 al-Qaida fighters left in Afghanistan and that the Afghan Taliban, an indigenous Afghan group seeking to win back territory within their own country, do not themselves pose a direct security threat to the United States. He said: "When the two are aligned, it's mainly on the tactical front."

The comments were made a day after the Taliban asserted that it did not pose a direct threat to the United States. The Taliban stated that their aim was "obtainment of independence and establishment of an Islamic system" in their country, and not to attack the West. "We did not have any agenda to harm other countries, including Europe, nor do we have such agenda today."

On June 27, 2010, CIA Director Leon Panetta

Leon Panetta

Leon Edward Panetta is the 23rd and current United States Secretary of Defense, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama since 2011. Prior to taking office, he served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency...

revealed that there were possibly fewer than 50 members of Al Qaeda, and at most 100, in Afghanistan.

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In January 2009, an independent analysis by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

in Washington, D.C. dismissed the argument that a withdrawal of the foreign military presence would allow al-Qaeda to operate in Afghanistan, pointing out that, first, the U.S.-led military forces do not control the periphery of the Afghan territory anyway, and, second, that targeted operations with the agreement of the Kabul government could be used instead.

Others have also made the point that al-Qaeda operates in many other countries and simply does not need Afghanistan. The New York Times reported in November 2008 that a 2004 classified order identified at least 15 to 20 other countries outside of Afghanistan and Iraq where al-Qaeda militants were believed to be operating or to have sanctuary. The countries listed in the secret order signed by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld with the approval of U.S. President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

included Syria, Pakistan, Yemen

Yemen

The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....

, Saudi Arabia and several other Persian Gulf states. Since 2004, the United States has repeatedly used the broad, secret authority granted by that order to conduct targeted operations against al-Qaeda and other militants in many countries outside of Afghanistan, including Somalia, Ethiopia, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Kenya, the Philippines, and elsewhere.
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In an influential September 2009 article entitled "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan", conservative commentator George Will

George Will

George Frederick Will is an American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winner best known for his conservative commentary on politics...

similarly argued that "forces should be substantially reduced", and "America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units" in targeted operations.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden

Joe Biden

Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama...

and a number of other senior administration officials also favor moving toward a more scaled-back strategy that focuses on targeted, surgical operations against senior insurgent figures using drones and small special operations teams.

Others have further made the point that al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...

does not need a safe haven at all, and that terrorists can and have learned their craft in a Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

apartment, a home in Colorado

Colorado

Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

, a flight school in Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

, or myriad other places around the world.

As noted military historian Gwynne Dyer

Gwynne Dyer

Gwynne Dyer, OC is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military historian.Dyer was born in St. John's, Newfoundland and joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of sixteen...

pointed out, "The 9/11 attacks were not planned in Afghanistan. They were planned by al Qaeda operatives in Germany and Florida, and it is very unlikely that the Taleban government of Afghanistan had advance warning of them."

In his September 10, 2009 letter of resignation as the State Department's Senior Civilian Representative in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, in protest against the American war in Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh, a former U.S. Marine captain, stated:

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In a September 16, 2009 Washington Post article, Paul R. Pillar

Paul R. Pillar

Paul R. Pillar is a 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency , a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies and a member of the Center for Peace and Security Studies....

, deputy chief of the counterterrorist center at the CIA from 1997 to 1999 and director of graduate studies at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program, questioned the assumption that al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups need a haven at all, pointing out that "terrorists' organizations have become more network-like, not beholden to any one headquarters."

In a September 30, 2009 open letter to President Obama, foreign policy veteran William R. Polk

William R. Polk

William Roe Polk is a veteran foreign policy consultant, author, and relation of president James K. Polk. He was born in Fort Worth, Texas and grew up on a ranch in west Texas. He attended public school in Fort Worth and the New Mexico Military Institute...

stated: "Since terrorist attacks can be mounted from many places, the only effective long-term defense against them is to deal with their causes."

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When asked by Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward

Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist and non-fiction author. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor of the Post....

why al-Qaeda, which is comparatively safe in its current sanctuaries in Pakistan, would even want to return to Afghanistan, the National Security Adviser

National Security Advisor (United States)

The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor , serves as the chief advisor to the President of the United States on national security issues...

of the United States, General James L. Jones

James L. Jones

James Logan Jones, Jr. is the former United States National Security Advisor and a retired United States Marine Corps General....

, replied, "That's a good question. . . . This is certainly one of the questions that we will be discussing. This is one of the questions, for example, that one could come back at with General McChrystal."

Creating and training insurgents

The January 2009 analysis by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

in Washington, D.C. found that "the majority of Afghans are now deeply opposed to the foreign troops on their soil", and concluded that the presence of foreign military forces in Afghanistan is the single most important factor in mobilizing support and increasing recruiting for the Taliban.

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According to the Carnegie report, the insurgency against the foreign military forces would abate with the removal of foreign troops from Afghanistan, and "the momentum of the Taliban would slow or stop altogether, because without a foreign occupier the Jihadist and nationalist feelings of the population would be much more difficult to mobilize."

The Pew Research Center

Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center is an American think tank organization based in Washington, D.C. that provides information on issues, attitudes and trends shaping the United States and the world. The Center and its projects receive funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts. In 1990, Donald S...

reported in February 2009: "As has been the case since 2006, more Americans believe decreasing -- rather than increasing -- the U.S. military presence abroad is the more effective way to reduce the threat of terrorist attacks on the United States. Half of Americans (50%) now believe that decreasing the U.S. military presence overseas would be the more effective policy, while just 31% say an increased presence would be more effective."

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In his September 10, 2009 letter resigning over the American war in Afghanistan, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency, Matthew Hoh, the State Department's Senior Civilian Representative in Zabul Province

Zabul Province

Zabul is a historic province of Afghanistan. Zabul became an independent province from neighbouring Kandahar in 1963, with Qalat being named the provincial capital. It should not be confused with the city Zabol, on the Iranian side of the border with Afghanistan.- Political and security situation...

, wrote: "The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified."

As with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

, he advised that the U.S. reduce its combat forces in Afghanistan, if not remove them entirely.

In a statement made to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, a group of former intelligence officials and other experts decided to go public with their concerns and warned:

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The group included Howard Hart

Howard Hart

Howard Phillips Hart is a former Central Intelligence Agency officer. He worked as the CIA Chief of Station in Islamabad, Pakistan from May 1981 until 1984. He was succeeded by William Piekney in the summer of 1984.-Early life:...

, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan who helped organize the anti-Soviet insurgency in the 1980s; David Miller, a former ambassador and National Security Council

United States National Security Council

The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...

official; William J. Olson, a counterinsurgency scholar at the National Defense University

National Defense University

The National Defense University is an institution of higher education funded by the United States Department of Defense, intended to facilitate high-level training, education, and the development of national security strategy. It is chartered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with Navy Vice Admiral...

; and another CIA veteran who spent 12 years in the region, was station chief in Kabul at the time the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and later headed the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.

In the 2009 documentary "Rethink Afghanistan", several other former U.S. intelligence officials and experts on Afghanistan also contend that the war in Afghanistan does nothing to protect the safety of American people, but, on the contrary, only threatens the safety and security of Americans, both in the U.S. and abroad:

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In his September 30, 2009 open letter to President Obama, foreign policy veteran William R. Polk

William R. Polk

argued that trying to defeat the Taliban militarily is not in America's interest, saying: "The harder we try, the more likely terrorism will be to increase and spread."

According to the August 2010 report by the Afghanistan Study Group: "The current U.S. military effort is helping fuel the very insurgency we are attempting to defeat."

Insurgent detention and recruitment facilities

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In September 2009, a four-page supplement by U.S. General Stanley McChrystal to his 66-page report conceded that because of a shortage of interrogation personnel at U.S. military's Bagram Theater Internment Facility

Bagram Theater Internment Facility

The Parwan Detention Facility , also called the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, is a United States-run prison located next to Bagram Airfield in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan.It was formerly known as the Bagram Collection Point...

, hundreds of Afghans were being held in detention for long periods without charge, resulting in the Afghan prison system having become a "sanctuary and base" for militants, providing them fertile ground to radicalize and recruit new insurgents.

According to a series of New York Times reports in 2008 and 2009, the U.S. Bagram detention facility, "a crude place where most prisoners are fenced into large metal pens", was packed with about 630 prisoners, with the rising numbers of detainees "driven primarily by the deepening war in Afghanistan". The articles reported that Bagram prisoners, held under harsh conditions described as worse than at Guantanamo, had no access to lawyers, and that some detainees had been held there without charge for more than five years. Harsh interrogation methods

Enhanced interrogation techniques

Enhanced interrogation techniques or alternative set of procedures are terms adopted by the George W. Bush administration in the United States to describe certain severe interrogation methods, often described as torture...

and sleep deprivation

Sleep deprivation

Sleep deprivation is the condition of not having enough sleep; it can be either chronic or acute. A chronic sleep-restricted state can cause fatigue, daytime sleepiness, clumsiness and weight loss or weight gain. It adversely affects the brain and cognitive function. Few studies have compared the...

were widely used, and the Red Cross reported cruel treatment in violation of the Geneva Conventions

Geneva Conventions

The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war...

. Two Afghan detainees died there in December 2002

Bagram torture and prisoner abuse

In 2005, The New York Times obtained a 2,000-page United States Army report concerning the homicides of two unarmed civilian Afghan prisoners by U.S. armed forces in 2002 at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Bagram, Afghanistan. The prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, were chained to the...

after being beaten by American soldiers and hung by their arms from the ceiling of isolation cells.

In 2007, the U.S. military began transferring many detainees from the U.S. Bagram Theater detention camp and from the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp to the Afghan-run Pul-e-Charkhi prison

Pul-e-Charkhi prison

Pul-e-Charkhi , also known as Afghan National Detention Facility, is the largest prison in Afghanistan east of Kabul. Construction of the jail began in the 1970s by order of former president Mohammed Daoud Khan and was completed during the 1980s...

outside Kabul. By May 2008, American officials conceded that the Afghan prison could not absorb all the Afghans being detained by the United States military. According to Human Rights First

Human Rights First

Human Rights First is a nonprofit, nonpartisan human rights organization based in New York City and Washington, D.C....

, the United States had transferred 250 former Guantánamo detainees into the Pul-e-Charkhi prison

Pul-e-Charkhi prison

outside Kabul since 2007, often to the shock of their waiting families. By July 2009, with Pul-e-Charkhi prison

Pul-e-Charkhi prison

holding some 360 prisoners transferred into the Afghan prison system from the U.S. detention facilities at Bagram and Guantanamo, American officials were expressing fears that the Afghan prison system would be overwhelmed by waves of new detainees captured in the American-led military offensives being conducted by thousands of Marines in southern Afghanistan.

According to McChrystal's supplementary report:

More than 2,500 out of 14,500 prisoners in Afghanistan's prison system were linked to militant groups.
"There are more insurgents per square foot in corrections facilities than anywhere else in Afghanistan."
"Hardened, committed Islamists are indiscriminately mixed with petty criminals and sex offenders, and they are using the opportunity to radicalise and indoctrinate them."
A shortage of interrogation personnel at the U.S. Bagram detention facility results in indefinite detentions.
"As a result, hundreds are held without charge or without a defined way ahead. This allows the enemy to radicalise them far beyond their pre-capture orientation."

Even with the transfer of many Bagram detainees into the Afghan prison system since 2007, the New York Times reported in January 2010 that more than 700 people detained by the American military continued to be imprisoned indefinitely and without legal recourse at the notorious prison at U.S. Bagram Air Base.

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Incubating and disseminating bomb-making expertise

Suicide bomb attacks were virtually unheard of in Afghanistan prior to the U.S. invasion in 2001, and both the use of suicide attacks and the use of improvised explosive device

Improvised explosive device

An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...

s (IED) as roadside bombs were relatively uncommon in Afghanistan until mid-2005.

According to a UN report on suicide attacks in Afghanistan: "During the ravages of the Soviet occupation, the warlords' struggle for domination, and even during the Taliban period, Afghans never undertook such operations." Despite thirty years of warfare, suicide attacks were not carried out by any Afghans until after mid-2003, and only came into prominence in mid-2005 when they began to escalate drastically.
The tactic is seen to have been imported from the U.S. occupation of Iraq following the American invasion in March 2003

2003 invasion of Iraq

The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...

. According to experts, Afghan militants saw how successful it was and began copying it, and there has also been evidence that foreign jihadis brought the tactics they learned in that war with them to Afghanistan. Former CIA officer Art Keller stated in 2007: "People are going there to learn the tactics, and then come back."

According to CNN's Peter Bergen

Peter Bergen

Peter Bergen is a print and television journalist, author, and CNN's national security analyst. Bergen produced the first television interview with Osama Bin Laden in 1997. The interview, which aired on CNN, marked the first time that bin Laden declared war against the United States to a Western...

:

"The Bush administration hoped that Iraq would draw terrorists to one place, making them easier to kill, the so-called flypaper theory. But the opposite happened. Iraq has strengthened al Qaeda. It's now a training ground for terrorists from around the world."

In writing about suicide attacks in the war in Afghanistan, security analyst Anthony Cordesman

Anthony Cordesman

Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and is a national security analyst for ABC News on a number of global conflicts...

noted that in 2008: "Their lethality and skill increased and so did estimates of the number of suicide bombers in training."
The use of improvised explosive device

Improvised explosive device

An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...

s (IEDs) in Afghanistan also began to drastically increase in 2005. Military and defense analyst John Pike noted, "The insurgency in Afghanistan has been very carefully studying the lessons learned by the insurgents in Iraq."

A July 2009 New York Times article entitled "Afghan Insurgents Expand Their Use of Increasingly Sophisticated Homemade Bombs" reported that according to American military officers, IED's in Afghanistan were becoming more common and more sophisticated with each week.

In September 2009, the Washington Times reported that the Taliban had learned to build simpler, cheaper, deadlier anti-personnel IED bombs made of hard-to-detect non-metal components, such as carbon harvested from everyday batteries and plastic, according to a confidential U.S. military report. The Pentagon report, which spoke of a Taliban IED research-and-development program, described the latest IEDs to appear in the Afghan war as "less costly", "smaller, lighter, more quickly constructed", "small and easily transported and emplaced", "easily camouflaged", "extremely difficult to detect", "lethal".

In January 2010, The Independent reported military experts saying that insurgents in Afghanistan had developed a new generation of deadly 'undetectable' bombs made out of wood, with no metal or electronic parts. Chris Hunter, a former bomb disposal expert, described them as "mass produced" and "being wheeled out on an industrial level. You see them everywhere." According to one US group, the number of IEDs used in Afghanistan had surged by 400% since 2007, matched by a 400% increase in the number of troops killed by them, and an even higher 700% increase in the number that have been wounded by them.

In February 2009, news magazine The Week

The Week

The Week, styled as THE WEEK, is a weekly news magazine.-History:It was founded in the United Kingdom by Jolyon Connell in 1995. In April 2001, the magazine began publishing an American edition; an Australian edition followed in October 2008. Dennis Publishing publishes the U.K. and Australian...

wrote:

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Geo-political and corporate interests

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Opposition to the war in Afghanistan often has at its core the view that the U.S. invasion, decade-long occupation, and military build-up in Afghanistan are being conducted for geo-political purposes and U.S. corporate energy interests.

U.S. energy interests

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In an article entitled "America's Pipe Dream" published October 23, 2001, British investigative journalist George Monbiot

George Monbiot

George Joshua Richard Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He lives in Machynlleth, Wales, writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain and Bring on the...

outlined the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as primarily being a bid to control oil and gas resources and distribution in central Asia.

In 1995, U.S. energy giant Unocal, partnered with Saudi oil company, Delta Oil Co. Ltd, started negotiating to build pipelines through Afghanistan to transport oil and gas from Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan , formerly also known as Turkmenia is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic . Turkmenistan is one of the six independent Turkic states...

to ports in Pakistan on the Arabian Sea

Arabian Sea

The Arabian Sea is a region of the Indian Ocean bounded on the east by India, on the north by Pakistan and Iran, on the west by the Arabian Peninsula, on the south, approximately, by a line between Cape Guardafui in northeastern Somalia and Kanyakumari in India...

, a multi-billion dollar scheme that would require a stable regime in Afghanistan to guarantee safe passage of the energy commodities. The U.S.-Saudi-led consortium, called CentGas

CentGas

Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd. was a consortium formed in the 1990s to develop a project to build the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline from Turkmenistan's natural gas fields to Pakistan. The consortium had also considered an extension of the pipeline to the New Delhi area...

, also included firms from Pakistan, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and Korea.

Shortly after the Taliban gained control of Kabul

Kabul

Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...

in September 1996, The Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...

reported:

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According to former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency

Defense Intelligence Agency

The Defense Intelligence Agency is a member of the Intelligence Community of the United States, and is the central producer and manager of military intelligence for the United States Department of Defense, employing over 16,500 U.S. military and civilian employees worldwide...

military analyst Julie Sirrs who went to Afghanistan in October 1998 and met with Ahmed Shah Massoud

Ahmed Shah Massoud

Ahmad Shah Massoud was a Kabul University engineering student turned military leader who played a leading role in driving the Soviet army out of Afghanistan, earning him the name Lion of Panjshir. His followers call him Āmir Sāhib-e Shahīd...

, the leader of the Northern Alliance

Northern Alliance

The Afghan Northern Alliance is a military-political umbrella organization created by the Islamic State of Afghanistan in 1996.Northern Alliance may also refer to:*Northern Alliance , a Canadian white supremacist group...

: "Massoud

Ahmed Shah Massoud

told me he had proof that Unocal had provided money that helped the Taliban take Kabul" in September 1996.

In the years that followed, Unocal frequently wooed Taliban leaders, hosting them as VIP guests at its headquarters in Houston, Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, and in meetings with U.S. government officials in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

According to a December 10, 2001 article in the Boston Herald

Boston Herald

The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...

: "Before the pipeline deal could go through, Unocal needed the U.S. to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government in Afghanistan. To that end, company representatives arranged high-level meetings between the Taliban and State Department officials in Washington, D.C." On at least one occasion, in December 1997, Unocal oil executives and representatives, including Zalmay M. Khalilzad, a former assistant undersecretary of defense under Defense Secretary Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney

Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....

in the first Bush administration, wined and dined the Taliban and took them on a shopping spree.

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On November 28, 1997, Unocal's vice-president of international relations, John J. Maresca, made a presentation at a NATO Parliamentary Assembly

NATO Parliamentary Assembly

Founded in 1955, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly serves as the consultative interparliamentary organisation for the North Atlantic Alliance. Its current President is Karl A...

seminar in Istanbul. In previous roles, Maresca had been U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy, chief of staff to two NATO Secretaries General, State Department officer in charge of NATO political affairs, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and Special Envoy to open US relations with the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. In a session named "The Caucasus Region: competing stakes, conflicts and co-operation", Maresca spoke of the U.S. State Department's assessment of Caspian oil reserves, underlined the importance of ensuring transport of those reserves to market, identified important markets, gave the participants information on existing and planned pipelines, and discussed various pipeline routes.

Two months later, in February 1998, Maresca also addressed U.S. Congress representatives in a Hearing on U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics, congratulating them for "focusing on Central Asia oil and gas

Oil and gas field

An oil and gas field is a field, or vast reservoir, that contains both oil and natural gas.-See also:* Oil field* Natural gas field* Oil reservoir* List of oil fields* List of natural gas fields...

reserves and the role they play in shaping U.S. policy" and telling them that growing demand for energy in Asia coupled with U.S. sanctions against Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

made Afghanistan "the only other possible route" available to them for Caspian

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...

oil. Maresca again made clear the Unocal pipeline project's need for a "recognized government" that would have "the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company". According to author-journalist Richard W. Behan in an article entitled "The Surreal Politics of Premeditated War", Unocal's vice-president had essentially asked politely to have the Taliban removed and a stable government inserted.

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In the summer of 2001, the United States Geological Survey

United States Geological Survey

The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology,...

(USGS)'s annual assessment of Afghanistan reported that, in addition to its considerable mineral resources, "Afghanistan has additional economic potential because of its strategic geographical position as a transit route for Cental Asian hydrocarbons to the Arabian Sea. This potential includes proposed multibillion dollar oil and gas export pipelines through the country."

In July 2001, with Cheney back in the Whitehouse as Vice-President and Khalilzad appointed to President Bush's National Security Council, three American officials met with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officials to inform them of planned U.S. military strikes against Afghanistan in October.

In August 2001, U.S. State Department official Christina Rocca told the Taliban, at their last pipeline negotiation just five weeks before 9/11, "Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."

On October 7, 2001, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan officially began with a bombing campaign that Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

of MIT described as "weeks of carpet bombing

Carpet bombing

Carpet bombing is a large aerial bombing done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land. The phrase invokes the image of explosions completely covering an area, in the same way that a carpet covers a floor. Carpet bombing is usually achieved by dropping many...

and resort to virtually every available device short of nuclear weapons ("daisy cutters

BLU-82

The BLU-82B/C-130 weapon system, known under program "Commando Vault" and nicknamed "daisy cutter" in Vietnam and in Afghanistan for its ability to flatten a forest into a helicopter landing zone, is a 15,000 pound conventional bomb, delivered from either a C-130 or an MC-130 transport aircraft....

", cluster bombs. etc.)"

On October 10, 2001, though the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan had barely begun, an article in the English-language Pakistani Frontier Post reported that U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain had already informed the Pakistani Oil Minister that, "in view of recent geopolitical developments", the negotiations for a pipeline through Afghanistan would be revived.

On December 5, 2001, just 8 weeks into the U.S. invasion, Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai, GCMG is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001...

was named Chairman of the Interim Administration of Afghanistan. According to the New York Times, Karzai had played a "role funneling covert American aid" to mujahedeen insurgents in Afghanistan in the eighties, beginning a long relationship with U.S. policy makers in Washington.

A top contact for the CIA in the eighties, Karzai had also later testified before Congress, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, periodically met former CIA officer, Senate aide, and future State Department official Christina Rocca, and addressed a RAND

RAND

RAND Corporation is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company. It is currently financed by the U.S. government and private endowment, corporations including the healthcare industry, universities...

seminar on Afghanistan in 2000 at Khalilzad's invitation. A U.S. State Department official referred to Karzai's close ties with the U.S.: "To us, he is still Hamid, a man we've dealt with for some time."

In addition to these ties, Karzai was reported to have also been an adviser to Unocal.

On January 1, 2002, nine days after Hamid Karzai was sworn into office, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, who had been a key Unocal consultant on the pipeline project and special liaison between Unocal and the Taliban government in the pipeline negotiations, was named as U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan by U.S. President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

, while continuing his role in Bush's National Security Council.

On February 8, 2002, just 6 weeks after being sworn into office as Chairman of the Interim Administration, Karzai announced that he and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf

Pervez Musharraf

Pervez Musharraf , is a retired four-star general who served as the 13th Chief of Army Staff and tenth President of Pakistan as well as tenth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. Musharraf headed and led an administrative military government from October 1999 till August 2007. He ruled...

had discussed the proposed Central Asian gas pipeline project and agreed to work on its development.

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On May 30, 2002, just four months later, Hamid Karzai, still as chairman of Afghanistan's interim administration, signed a deal with the presidents of Pakistan and Turkmenistan to construct a multi-billion dollar 1,500-km Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline

Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline

The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline is a proposed natural gas pipeline being developed by the Asian Development Bank. The pipeline will transport Caspian Sea natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and then to India. The abbreviation comes from the first letters of those...

from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad gas field

Dauletabad gas field

The Dauletabad Gas Field is a large natural gas field located in the Amu-Darya Basin, Ahal province, Turkmenistan. It is located in the vicinity of the Turkmenistan–Iran border, and is named after the Dowlatabad settlement across the border in Iran...

s to the Pakistani port city of Gwadar

Gwadar

Gwadar also known as Godar is a developing port city on the southwestern Arabian Sea coast of Pakistan. It is the district headquarters of Gwadar District in Balochistan province and has a population of approximately 50,000.Gwadar is strategically located at the apex of the Arabian Sea and at the...

.

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Pipeline path 'clearing and holding' forces

In a June 2008 article in the Toronto Sun entitled "These wars are about oil, not democracy", defence analyst and journalist Eric Margolis

Eric Margolis

Eric S. Margolis is an American-born journalist and writer. For 27 years, ending in 2010, he was a contributing editor to the Toronto Sun chain of newspapers, writing mainly about the Middle East, South Asia and Islam. He contributes to the Huffington Post and appears frequently on Canadian...

remarked on the U.S. military bases just happening to be adjacent to the planned pipeline route, and wrote: "Work will begin on the TAPI

Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline

once Taliban forces are cleared from the pipeline route by U.S., Canadian and NATO forces. As American analyst Kevin Phillips writes, the U.S. military and its allies have become an "energy protection force.""

In a September 2009 article, author-journalist Richard W. Behan wrote: "Superimposing the base-locations over maps of the pipelines, the Bush Administration's design is unmistakable. U.S. bases in Afghanistan proper—there are now 15 altogether—precisely straddle the prospective pipeline routes."

In an April 2011 article, MIT professor Noam Chomsky stated that NATO has essentially become a "U.S.-run intervention force" serving the purposes of its energy interests.

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War in Afghanistan as a demonstration of U.S. military power

In a November 2, 2001 article entitled "US Bombs Are Boosting the Taliban", anti-Taliban Afghan leader Abdul Haq

Abdul Haq (Afghan leader)

Abdul Haq was an Afghan Pashtun mujahideen commander who fought against the Soviets and Afghan communists during the Soviet-Afghan War...

again presented the case he had repeatedly been making against U.S. military action in his country, but seemed resigned that the U.S. was not going to listen:

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Thriving opium production since the invasion

Opium production in Afghanistan has thrived since the U.S. invasion and overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001. According to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is a United Nations agency that was established in 1997 as the Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention by combining the United Nations International Drug Control Program and the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Division in the United Nations...

(UNODC) data, there was more opium poppy cultivation in each of the past five growing seasons (2004–2008), than in any one year during the Taliban five-year rule (1996–2001).

UNODC reported in its November 2008 report that the majority 58% of opium poppy-growing farmers in Afghanistan began to cultivate opium after the 2001 U.S. invasion.

In July 2000, the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar

Mohammed Omar

Mullah Mohammed Omar , often simply called Mullah Omar, is the leader of the Taliban movement that operates in Afghanistan. He was Afghanistan's de facto head of state from 1996 to late 2001, under the official title "Head of the Supreme Council"...

, argued that opium was against Islam and banned its cultivation. The Taliban edict, with the threat of jail for elders and mullahs who allowed its cultivation, resulted in a drastic 90% reduction in opium cultivation between 2000 and 2001.

Even compared to 2000 - the year before the Taliban opium ban of 2000–2001 saw effect - the overall opium-related income in the Afghan economy had risen nearly fourfold by 2008, reflecting higher export volumes as well as higher prices.

Financial cost of the war to taxpayers and Western economies

By 2008, the U.S. military was spending nearly $100 million a day in Afghanistan.

By one estimate in September 2009, the United States, which has approximately two-thirds of the foreign troops in Afghanistan, had already spent some $250 billion in Afghanistan since 2001.

By October or November 2009, estimates by the Congressional Research Service

Congressional Research Service

The Congressional Research Service , known as "Congress's think tank", is the public policy research arm of the United States Congress. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS works exclusively and directly for Members of Congress, their Committees and staff on a...

placed the cost that could be accounted for at $300 billion spent or committed.

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In September 2009, the Christian Science Monitor reported that in the upcoming budget year, the U.S. war in Afghanistan would, for the first time, cost American taxpayers more than the U.S. war in Iraq. By the end of September 2010, the total military budget costs for both wars will have exceeded $1 trillion

Orders of magnitude (numbers)

This list contains selected positive numbers in increasing order, including counts of things, dimensionless quantity and probabilities. Each number is given a name in the short scale, which is used in English speaking countries, as well as a name in the long scale, which is used in some of the...

.

By October 2009, news reports indicated U.S. costs of fighting the war in Afghanistan at $165 million every 24 hours.

Officially, the United States' military costs for the war in Afghanistan were budgeted at $65 billion for fiscal 2010, a figure amounting to $178 million a day.

However the true cost will probably be closer to $85 billion, or more, according to Gordon Adams, a defense expert at American University

American University

American University is a private, Methodist, liberal arts, and research university in Washington, D.C. The university was chartered by an Act of Congress on December 5, 1892 as "The American University", which was approved by President Benjamin Harrison on February 24, 1893...

's School of International Service

School of International Service

The School of International Service is American University's school of advanced international study in the areas of international politics, international communication, development, international economic relations, peace and conflict resolution, global environmental politics, and U.S...

in Washington. That figure would amount to about $233 million a day.

Factoring in veteran health and other benefits, replenishment of military hardware, a higher price for oil, and the interest

Interest

Interest is a fee paid by a borrower of assets to the owner as a form of compensation for the use of the assets. It is most commonly the price paid for the use of borrowed money, or money earned by deposited funds....

on debt incurred by the wars, Linda Bilmes

Linda Bilmes

Linda J. Bilmes is the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University. She is a full-time faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School where she teaches public policy, budgeting and public finance...

, a Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

economist, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

economist, estimated a "moderate-realistic" bill for the two wars of $5 trillion

Trillion

-Numbers:Either of the two numbers :* 1,000,000,000,000 for all short scale countries...

to U.S. taxpayers.

In September 2009, foreign policy veteran William R. Polk

William R. Polk

suggested that the real cost of the war in Afghanistan to the U.S. economy would end up being over $3 trillion.

In September 2009, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office

Congressional Budget Office

The Congressional Budget Office is a federal agency within the legislative branch of the United States government that provides economic data to Congress....

estimated that a speedier withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, with a sharp reduction in troops over three years, could save taxpayers $1.1 trillion from the budget in the next decade.

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In December 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a surge of yet another thirty thousand U.S. troops into Afghanistan, increasing the buildup of the U.S. military in Afghanistan by another 40-45% and adding further red ink to the United States' $1.4 trillion deficit spending

Deficit spending

Deficit spending is the amount by which a government, private company, or individual's spending exceeds income over a particular period of time, also called simply "deficit," or "budget deficit," the opposite of budget surplus....

and national debt

United States public debt

The United States public debt is the money borrowed by the federal government of the United States at any one time through the issue of securities by the Treasury and other federal government agencies...

of over $12 trillion. The administration estimated the cost for this surge at $30 billion (presumably for an initial 18 month period). However, the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee with authority over the Pentagon's budget, U.S. Congress Rep. John Murtha

John Murtha

John Patrick "Jack" Murtha, Jr. was an American politician from the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Murtha, a Democrat, represented Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1974 until his death in 2010....

, estimated that the surge would cost at least $40 billion - $10 billion more than the administration's estimate. The congressman also called for a surtax to finance the war, saying the U.S. risks the sort of inflation

Inflation

In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...

seen in the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

era.

By February 2010, with thousands more U.S. troops still to arrive, the monthly cost of the war in Afghanistan to U.S. taxpayers had exceeded that of the U.S. war in Iraq - consuming $6.7 billion per month, compared with $5.5 billion in Iraq, and amounting to about $223 million per day.

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By May 2010, the estimate for fiscal year 2010 that was being reported had risen to $105 billion, amounting to $288 million per day. Meanwhile, the cost of the war to U.S. taxpayers in fiscal year 2011 was being projected at $117 billion, a figure amounting to around $320 million per day. Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is an independent, non-profit, Washington, D.C.-based think tank specializing in US defense policy, force planning, and budgets. It is headed by Andrew Krepinevich, a West Point graduate...

stated: "The cost just cascades. That's always been an issue in Afghanistan."

By December 2010, estimates had the cost of the war running at as high as $13 billion a month, or over $433 million per day, and a USA Today / Gallup poll reported that over two-thirds of Americans, the 68% majority, worry that the costs of the war in Afghanistan make it more difficult to address the problems facing them at home.

In February 2011, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly warned that it would be unwise to ever again engage in such a "costly—and controversial—large-scale American military intervention" as in Afghanistan or Iraq.

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In February 2011, Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee

United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is a standing committee of the United States Senate. It is charged with leading foreign-policy legislation and debate in the Senate. The Foreign Relations Committee is generally responsible for overseeing and funding foreign aid programs as...

, ticked through the rising financial costs of the U.S. war in Afghanistan:

100,000 U.S. military troops in Afghanistan,
another 31,000 U.S. military troops deployed in the surrounding region to support the operations in Afghanistan,
more than $100 billion in Obama's 2012 budget request for Afghanistan,
an additional $13 billion to train Afghan forces,
another $5 billion in civilian assistance.

He stated: "With al-Qaeda largely displaced from the country but franchised in other locations, Afghanistan does not carry a strategic value that justifies 100,000 U.S. troops and a $100 billion per year cost, especially given current fiscal restraints."

The Senate Foreign Relations Chairman, Senator John Kerry

John Kerry

John Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...

, warned: "Make no mistake, it is unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight."

In March 2011, U.S. Congress Representative Bruce Braley

Bruce Braley

Bruce Braley is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district lies in northeastern Iowa and includes Davenport, Bettendorf, Cedar Falls, Waterloo, Dubuque, and Clinton....

, a member of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, introduced the True Cost of War Act to require a full accounting on the long-term human and financials costs to the American people of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through 2020, including "interest on money borrowed, including interest for money already borrowed and anticipated interest payments on future borrowing."

Rep. Braley stated: "The American people - especially at a time when Republicans have been pushing all these budget cuts - are entitled to know what the true costs are."

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According to estimates near the beginning of 2011, the U.S. war in Afghanistan would cost U.S. taxpayers an $116 billion for that year - nearly twice the amounts being deeply slashed from domestic programs, including key U.S. infrastructure needs such as water, air traffic, and rail projects - while the minimum projected cost of the U.S. war for the next two years, $200 billion, exceeds the domestic budget deficit of all 50 states put together.

By May 2011, the Washington Post reported that in the face of increasing deficit spending

Deficit spending

and yet more cuts to domestic programs in the U.S. the immense cost of the war in Afghanistan would likely be the primary factor in the discussions to reduce troops: Spending by the U.S. military alone on its operations in Afghanistan was heading to $113 billion for the fiscal year, with the military seeking another $107 billion for the next fiscal year. According to a senior administration official: "Where we're at right now is simply not sustainable."

With the costs to maintain the Afghan army and police forces, estimated at $6 billion to $8 billion a year, far exceeding the means of the Afghan government whose annual budget totals only about $1.5 billion, he stated: "We’re building an army that they’ll never be able to pay for, which means we’re going to have to pay for it for years and years to come."

Military and civilian officials agree that the cost of the Afghan war is staggering, and another senior administration official involved with Afghanistan policy stated that the cost of the war was now "the new 800-pound gorilla" and policy discussion was shifting from "Is the strategy working?" to "Can we afford this?"

In the United Kingdom, a comprehensive analysis by The Independent

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

in July 2009, revealed that the cost of the war to British taxpayers had already exceeded £12 billion ($US 20 billion) - enough to pay for "23 new hospitals, 60,000 new teachers or 77,000 new nurses". A Ministry of Defence source indicated that the department feared the Afghan campaign was adding at least £250 million a year ($US 405 million) to their spending on veteran welfare services. In addition to these military costs, British taxpayer money is also being spent on Afghanistan by the Department of International Development (DfID), which will have spent close to £1 billion ($US 1.6 billion) between 2001 and 2012, and the Foreign Office (FCO) that had already spent £230 million ($US 375 million) since 2006 alone.

The overall cost of the war, combined for the over-40 nations that have at various points contributed to the decade-long American-led war, and additional spending by the UN, International Red Cross, and numerous other government-funded NGOs, since the 2001 U.S. invasion is not known.

Damage to the economy

In September 2011, a decade into the U.S.-led war, Linda Bilmes

Linda Bilmes

, a Harvard University

Harvard University

economist, and Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University

Columbia University

Nobel Prize

economist, wrote that the enormous costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had profoundly damaged the U.S. economy:

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They wrote that the costs of the wars would continue to burden U.S. taxpayers and the U.S. economy for decades after whenever the U.S. military leaves those countries. The future debts from the war - including interest

Interest

payments on all the borrowed money, replacing worn and destroyed military equipment, and decades of paying for the medical and disability benefits of hundreds of thousands of veterans - "are not listed anywhere in the federal government's budget" and would "continue to compromise America's investments in its future for decades."

On September 19, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

's proposed plan to reduce U.S. deficit

Deficit

A government budget deficit is the amount by which some measure of government revenues falls short of some measure of government spending.If a government is running a positive budget deficit, it is also said to be running a negative budget surplus .-Primary deficit, total deficit, and debt:The...

spending stated that $1.1 trillion would be saved by withdrawing all U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan over the next three years (by 2014) and ending the war in Iraq. The $1.1 trillion in deficit spending

Deficit spending

on wars amounted to almost one-third of the proposed $3.6 trillion deficit-reduction package.

Length of the war

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The war in Afghanistan, launched October 7, 2001 as U.S. "Operation Enduring Freedom", has now stretched over a decade, entering an eleventh year on October 7, 2011 and marking for the U.S. the longest period of sustained warfare in its history - greater than the time the United States was involved in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

and the Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

combined.

The war in Afghanistan surpassed the length of official U.S. participation

Length of U.S. participation in major wars

-Length of U.S. official participation in major wars: Source: Associated Press-Notes:...

in the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

, 8 years and 5 months, in the spring of 2010 to become the longest-running U.S. war ever.

According to a study by the RAND

RAND

Corporation, an American think tank working for the U.S. military, counter-insurgency

Counter-insurgency

A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency involves actions taken by the recognized government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it...

campaigns won by governments have averaged 14 years.

In a July 2009 interview, when asked when German troops would withdraw from Afghanistan, former German Defence Minister Peter Struck

Peter Struck

Peter Struck was the German Minister of Defence under chancellor Gerhard Schröder from 22 October 2002 until 2005. A lawyer, Struck is a member of the Social Democratic Party.-Education:* 1962: Abitur...

replied: "I'm afraid it could take another 10 years."

In March 2011, U.S. Congressman Bruce Braley

Bruce Braley

reported that American military commanders in Afghanistan very clearly expect - under the best-case scenario - a "significant U.S. presence" to continue in that country for approximately another decade. His report of the expectations of a continued U.S. military presence through 2020 came after a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan where he met with U.S. General David Petreus, U.S. Ambassador and former general Karl Eikenberry

Karl Eikenberry

Karl Winfrid Eikenberry is a retired United States Army Lieutenant General and former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.-Education:Eikenberry graduated from Goldsboro High School in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1969 and then attended West Point, where he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant upon...

, as well as other military officials.

In December 2009, a week after U.S. President Barack Obama announced a surge of another thirty thousand U.S. military troops into Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, speaking at a news conference with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, stated that the Afghan government being supported would not be able to secure the country on its own "for another 15 to 20 years", suggesting a U.S.-led military presence until at least 2024, if not 2030.

At the end of December 2009, following a visit to Afghanistan as part of an eight-member congressional delegation, U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins

Brian Higgins

Brian Higgins is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2005. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district includes the southern two-thirds of Buffalo proper, most of that city's eastern and southern suburbs, and all of Chautauqua County.-Early life, education and career:A native of...

warned that U.S. military assessments describe a "generational commitment" requiring at least two decades and that might not work, and he stated that President Obama needed to be more forthright with the American people about the length of time involved and the prospects.

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A January 2009 U.S. Defense Department report assessing progress in Afghanistan concluded that building a fully competent and independent Afghan government would be a lengthy process that would last, "at a minimum, decades."

The head of the British Army and former ISAF

International Security Assistance Force

The International Security Assistance Force is a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan established by the United Nations Security Council on 20 December 2001 by Resolution 1386 as envisaged by the Bonn Agreement...

commander, General Sir David Richards, stated on August 8, 2009 that he believed Britain could still be militarily involved in Afghanistan in "30 to 40 years" time, raising the possibility of a military presence in Afghanistan until the year 2050.

Asked how long U.S. combat forces would be needed in Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates

Robert Gates

Dr. Robert Michael Gates is a retired civil servant and university president who served as the 22nd United States Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W....

replied it was "unpredictable" and "perhaps a few years". However, over the longer term, Gates said that even if security were achieved, progress in building Afghanistan's economy and government institutions would remain "a decades-long enterprise", and that the United States was "committed to that side of the equation for an indefinite period of time."

American defense analyst John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org envisions a near-endless scenario in Afghanistan: "It's not going to end. And it may get worse before it gets better ... it's going to last for decades."

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Comparison to the length of the Soviet war in Afghanistan

After 7 years and 7 months of war in Afghanistan, Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...

announced on July 20, 1987 the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, saying that the Soviet Union wanted to henceforth see an independent, sovereign

Sovereign

A sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority within its jurisdiction.Sovereign may also refer to:*Monarch, the sovereign of a monarchy*Sovereign Bank, banking institution in the United States*Sovereign...

Afghanistan with a non-aligned government. The complete withdrawal of Soviet troops took place over roughly one year and a half, ending on February 15, 1989, with the Soviet war in Afghanistan having lasted approximately 9 years and 2 months in its entirety.

In December 2010, the U.S. war in Afghanistan, which officially began October 7, 2001, exceeded the length of the entire Soviet campaign in Afghanistan.

Decades of war imposed on Afghans

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates

Robert Gates

, a former CIA director, stated in his 1996 memoirs "From the Shadows" that American intelligence services began to covertly aid opposing Islamic militant factions in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979. Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981....

, who was the U.S. National Security Adviser in 1979, likewise stated:

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The deliberate covert U.S. intervention to destabilize Afghanistan and use Islamic militants, extremists, and the people of Afghanistan as tools in a proxy war

Proxy war

A proxy war or proxy warfare is a war that results when opposing powers use third parties as substitutes for fighting each other directly. While powers have sometimes used governments as proxies, violent non-state actors, mercenaries, or other third parties are more often employed...

for U.S. geo-political purposes resulted in three decades of nearly continuous war and armed conflict in Afghanistan. Brzezinski continued:

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According to journalist Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid

Ahmed Rashid is a former Pakistani revolutionary, a journalist and best-selling author of several books about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia.-Biography:...

, between 1980 and 1992 the U.S. funnelled "four to five billion dollars" to fund Islamic militants in Afghanistan, mostly in the form of "lethal modern weaponry". In an August 10, 2000 interview, he stated: "The U.S. was the main provider of arms to the mujahideen in the 1980s ... The whole issue of terrorism and the presence of foreign mercenaries in Afghanistan is a result of American and Pakistani encouragement of radical Muslims in the 1980s to come to Afghanistan from all over the world and fight a jihad

Jihad

Jihad , an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād translates as a noun meaning "struggle". Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of God ". A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid; the plural is...

."

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In the decades of brutal war and conflict that followed, by 2000:

Afghanistan lost a third of its population.
Some 1.5 million Afghans were killed as a direct result of the conflict.
5 million Afghans fled as refugees to Iran and Pakistan, and others became exiles elsewhere.
A large part of the Afghan population was internally displaced.
An estimated 50% of Afghan villages were destroyed.
The country was contaminated with as many as 10 million land mine
Land mine
A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....

s and countless unexploded ordnance
Unexploded ordnance
Unexploded ordnance are explosive weapons that did not explode when they were employed and still pose a risk of detonation, potentially many decades after they were used or discarded.While "UXO" is widely and informally used, munitions and explosives of...

(shells, rockets, bombs, bullets).

In June 2009, in his Cairo speech addressing the Muslim world entitled "A New Beginning

A New Beginning

"A New Beginning" is the name of a speech delivered by United States President Barack Obama on June 4, 2009, from the Major Reception Hall at Cairo University in Cairo, Egypt. Al-Azhar University co-hosted the event...

", U.S. President Barack Obama

Barack Obama

acknowledged "a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations."

July 2009 marked three decades since the signing of the U.S. presidential directive that National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski had fully expected would "induce a Soviet military intervention." In August 2009, the head of the British Army and former ISAF

International Security Assistance Force

commander, General Sir David Richards, stated that he believed Britain could still be militarily involved in Afghanistan for another 3 or 4 decades.

Comparisons to the Soviet war in Afghanistan

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In November 1986, with 109,000 troops in Afghanistan and the war soon heading into an 8th year, the military counter-insurgency was not working. Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev

Sergei Akhromeyev

Sergey Fyodorovich Akhromeyev was a soviet military figure, Hero of the Soviet Union , Marshal of the Soviet Union .Akhromeyev was a Naval Infantry junior officer during the German-Soviet War, serving with distinction on the Leningrad front. At one point he was ordered to guard and hold a road on...

, commander of Soviet armed forces, was summoned to report on the situation to the USSR's politburo

Politburo

Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...

in the Kremlin

Kremlin

A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...

. His strong assessment was that the army needed more resources, and he warned that without more men and equipment "this war will continue for a very long time". By the peak of the Soviet deployment in 1987, Moscow had 140,000 troops in Afghanistan.

In September 2009, with 108,000 to 110,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan under U.S. command and the war soon heading into a 9th year, the military counter-insurgency was not working. A 66-page report by U.S. general Stanley McChrystal to the White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

administration on the situation in Afghanistan, leaked

News leak

A news leak is a disclosure of embargoed information in advance of its official release, or the unsanctioned release of confidential information.-Types of news leaks:...

in advance of an anticipated troop request, gave his strong assessment that more troops and resources were needed. McChrystal warned: "Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it. Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure." After officially receiving McChrystal's request for more troops, U.S. president Barack Obama would announce that some 30,000 more U.S. troops would be sent to Afghanistan over the course of the following year.

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McChrystal, the U.S. general, at the same time called for a new strategy of pulling troops from sparsely populated rural areas to concentrate on defending higher population urban areas. Tom Coghlan of The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

observed: "Students of Afghan history may note that this strategic conclusion was one previously reached by the Soviets, who also switched to a strategy of ceding remote areas and only defending population centres and the country's main arteries in 1986."

On July 20, 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan was announced, and within a little over a year and a half the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan was completed.

Comparisons to the Vietnam War

The decade-long war in Afghanistan has also been increasingly compared to the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

, and increasingly characterized as a quagmire.

In the spring of 2010, the war in Afghanistan surpassed the length of official U.S. participation

Length of U.S. participation in major wars

-Length of U.S. official participation in major wars: Source: Associated Press-Notes:...

in the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

, 8 years and 5 months, as the longest-running U.S. war ever.

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According to retired Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson, a Vietnam veteran who became chief of staff to Colin Powell

Colin Powell

Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...

, Secretary of State under President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

, the parallels between the two conflicts are strong, especially in terms of corrupt governments in Saigon then and Kabul

Kabul

Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...

now: "I see the same thing developing in Kabul. I see a corrupt leader. I see a leader who has as a vice president one of the most corrupt men, Fahim, in Afghanistan, probably."

In September 2009, an article by the New York Time's Frank Rich

Frank Rich

Frank Rich is an American essayist and op-ed columnist who wrote for The New York Times from 1980, when he was appointed its chief theatre critic, until 2011...

noted a new aspect in the strong parallels between the wars, the eerie similarity between the political maneuvers in 2009 and a half-century before, when John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

was weighing whether to send combat troops to Vietnam. "Military leaders lobbied for their new mission by planting leaks in the press." The Secretaries of Defense (Robert McNamara

Robert McNamara

Robert Strange McNamara was an American business executive and the eighth Secretary of Defense, serving under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968, during which time he played a large role in escalating the United States involvement in the Vietnam War...

) and State, as well as the Joint Chief of Staff and the president's special military adviser all supported sending combat troops, while Kennedy himself had reservations.

Dr. Jeffrey Record of the U.S. Air War College

Air War College

The Air War College is a part of the United States Air Force's Air University, headquartered at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Air University's higher headquarters is Air Education and Training Command headquartered at Randolph Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas. The Air War...

noted that Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...

in 1964, much like Barack Obama

Barack Obama

in 2009, also faced a pivotal decision on whether to commit more troops to the war in Vietnam or find a way to ramp it down. Johnson, concerned with having to use up political capital defending a de-escalation, made the fateful decision to escalate - the choice would come back to haunt him badly.

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Growing U.S. opposition to the war in Afghanistan

In March 2009, a bipartisan group of 14 members of the United States House of Representatives

United States House of Representatives

The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...

- Walter Jones

Walter B. Jones

Walter Beaman Jones, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1995. He is a member of the Republican Party. The district encompasses the Outer Banks and areas near the Pamlico Sound. Jones' father was Walter B. Jones, Sr., a Democratic Party congressman from the neighboring 1st district...

, Ron Paul

Ron Paul

Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul is an American physician, author and United States Congressman who is seeking to be the Republican Party candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Paul represents Texas's 14th congressional district, which covers an area south and southwest of Houston that includes...

, Dennis Kucinich

Dennis Kucinich

Dennis John Kucinich is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1997. He was furthermore a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections....

, Neil Abercrombie

Neil Abercrombie

Neil Abercrombie is the 7th and current Governor of Hawaii. He was the Democratic U.S. Representative of the First Congressional District of Hawaii which comprises urban Honolulu. He served in Congress from 1986 to 1987 and from 1991 to 2010 when he resigned to successfully run for governor...

, Roscoe Bartlett

Roscoe Bartlett

Roscoe Gardner Bartlett, Ph.D. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party, and a member of the Tea Party Caucus...

, Steve Kagen

Steve Kagen

Steven Leslie Kagen, M.D. is a physician and was the U.S. Representative for , serving from 2007 to 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party...

, Ed Whitfield

Ed Whitfield

Wayne Edward "Ed" Whitfield is the U.S. Representative of , serving since 1995. He is a member of the Republican Party.The district covers much of the western part of the state, including Hopkinsville, Paducah, Henderson and Kentucky's share of Fort Campbell.-Early life, education and...

, Lynn Woolsey

Lynn Woolsey

Lynn C. Woolsey is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993. She is a member of the Democratic Party. The district includes all of Marin County and most of Sonoma County. She is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and its co-chair...

, Bob Filner

Bob Filner

Robert Earl Filner is the U.S. Representative for , and previously the 50th, serving since 1993, and Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic Party...

, Jim McGovern

Jim McGovern

James Patrick "Jim" McGovern is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1997. He is a member of the Democratic Party....

, Howard Coble

Howard Coble

John Howard Coble is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1985. He is a member of the Republican Party.-Early life, education, and pre-political career:Coble was born in Greensboro, North Carolina...

, John Conyers

John Conyers

John Conyers, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1965 . He is a member of the Democratic Party...

, Marcy Kaptur

Marcy Kaptur

Marcia Carolyn "Marcy" Kaptur is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1983. She is a member of the Democratic Party. The district, anchored by the city of Toledo, includes all of Ottawa and Erie counties, and part of Lucas and Lorain counties.Serving her fourteenth term in the House of...

, John Duncan

John Duncan (US Administration)

John M. Duncan was born on September 26, 1945 in Oak Park, Illinois.President George W. Bush nominated John M. Duncan to be Under Secretary of the Treasury for Legislative Affairs on February 28, 2001. Mr. Duncan served as Administrative Assistant to former Senator William Roth as well as Majority...

, and Michael Michaud - signed a letter to President Obama urging him to reconsider his decision to send 17,000 more U.S. troops, and to "resist pressure to escalate further".

Their letter to Obama argued that the military escalation could be counterproductive to creating stability in Afghanistan and could harm U.S. security, noting that a recent Carnegie Endowment study had concluded that "The only meaningful way to halt the insurgency's momentum is to start withdrawing troops. The presence of foreign troops is the most important element driving the resurgence of the Taliban."

In September and October 2009, with U.S. military leaders requesting yet more troops - and polls showing the majority of American people opposed to the U.S. war in Afghanistan and to sending any more troops, more members of the United States House of Representatives

United States House of Representatives

and other leaders began to speak for and manifest their constituents' opposition.

On September 10, 2009, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, or Speaker of the House, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives...

Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi is the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives and served as the 60th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011...

stated: ""I don't think there is a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or in the Congress.".

Senator Carl Levin

Carl Levin

Carl Milton Levin is a Jewish-American United States Senator from Michigan, serving since 1979. He is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services. He is a member of the Democratic Party....

, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated: "There's a significant number of people in the country, and I don't know the exact percentages, that have questions about deepening our military involvement in Afghanistan."'

Senator Russell D. Feingold, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged discussion of a timeline for ending American involvement in Afghanistan.

Senator Dianne Feinstein

Dianne Feinstein

Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein is the senior U.S. Senator from California. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served in the Senate since 1992. She also served as 38th Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988....

, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee stated: "I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan. I believe it will remain a tribal entity", adding that she wanted the U.S. military mission to "be time-limited".

Senator Richard Durbin, assistant majority leader in the Senate, said: "Sending additional troops would not be the right thing to do."

In September 2009, Senator John F. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a veteran and protestor of the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

, warned of repeating the mistakes of Vietnam and said that the United States needed to have an exit strategy

Exit strategy

An exit strategy is a means of leaving one's current situation, either after a predetermined objective has been achieved, or as a strategy to mitigate failure. An organisation or individual without an exit strategy may be in a quagmire...

.

Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a retired four-star Army general, expressed skepticism that more troops would guarantee success.

On October 4, 2009, Representative Barbara Lee

Barbara Lee

Barbara Jean Lee is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1998. She is a member of the Democratic Party. She is the first woman to represent that district. Lee was the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and was the Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus...

with 21 other members of the United States House of Representatives

United States House of Representatives

introduced a bill, H.R. 3699, to prohibit any funding to increase the U.S. military buildup in Afghanistan beyond its current level.

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On October 8, 2009, key Democrats on Capitol Hill warned that a decision by President Obama to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan could trigger a revolt within his own party, possibly including an attempt to cut off funds for the controversial military buildup.

Representative David R. Obey, chairman of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee stated: "I believe we need to more narrowly focus our efforts and have a much more achievable and targeted policy in that region. Otherwise we run the risk of repeating the mistakes we made in Vietnam and the Russians made in Afghanistan."

Representative John P. Murtha, also on the House Appropriations Committee and an influential voice on military affairs, stated: "The public is worn out by war. The troops, no matter what the military says, are exhausted."

Senator Russell D. Feingold, a member of both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee, stated that if Obama decides to send more troops, the House of Representatives

United States House of Representatives

should contest it.

Senator Feingold, who favors a timetable for withdrawal and opposes McChrystal's troop surge, said in an interview that his constituents were weary of war and were in "almost unanimous agreement" that "we've stayed there a long time and we need to figure out appropriately what we can accomplish."

On October 15, 2009, Senator Robert Byrd

Robert Byrd

Robert Carlyle Byrd was a United States Senator from West Virginia. A member of the Democratic Party, Byrd served as a U.S. Representative from 1953 until 1959 and as a U.S. Senator from 1959 to 2010...

, in an emotional speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

, suggested that the eight-year old U.S. war in Afghanistan had become lost in some broader scheme of nation-building

State-Building

State-building is a term used in state theory. It describes the construction of a functioning state. This concept was first used in connection to the creation of states in Western Europe and focused on the power enforcement of state in society ....

. Referring to "mission creep

Mission creep

Mission creep is the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes. Mission creep is usually considered undesirable due to the dangerous path of each success breeding more ambitious attempts, only stopping when a final, often catastrophic, failure occurs...

" in Afghanistan, he said:

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On October 27, 2009, the Washington Post reported that a U.S. official in Afghanistan had resigned in protest over the U.S. war, in a move that sent ripples all the way to the White House. Matthew Hoh, a State Department Foreign Service officer serving as the Senior Civilian Representative in Zabul Province

Zabul Province

submitted his resignation on September 10, with a letter outlining the reasons for which he felt he had to resign over the war, writing, "I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures or resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war."

On November 4, 2009, U.S. Congress Rep. Eric Massa

Eric Massa

-March to the Primaries:Freshman incumbent Randy Kuhl had been elected to Congress with slightly over 50% of the popular vote in a three way race in 2004. In early 2005, former U.S. Naval officer Eric J.J. Massa, a long-time friend of 2004 presidential candidate General Wesley Clark filed to run...

spoke before the U.S. House of Congress to say enough is enough in Afghanistan. He stated: "Today is the 2,950th day of this war. It has cost us $300 billion, $3,947 per American family. Enough is enough. It is time to bring our troops home. ... the deployment of additional troops in Afghanistan and the continuation of this conflict is both not in the interest of our Nation, and, in fact, is on par with a potential error the size of our initial invasion in Iraq."

In November 2009, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Lt.-Gen. Karl Eikenberry

Karl Eikenberry

, the retired army general who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2005–2007, warned President Obama against committing tens of thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan. His dramatic intervention into the debate on a troop surge reportedly infruriated U.S. General McChrystal, the commander of all foreign military forces in Afghanistan who had been requesting another 40,000 troops.

In April 2010, Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern

Jim McGovern

James Patrick "Jim" McGovern is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1997. He is a member of the Democratic Party....

, Republican Congressman Walter Jones

Walter Jones

Walter Jones may refer to:* Walter Jones , British polo competitor at the 1908 Summer Olympics* Walter B. Jones , former State Geologist of Alabama...

, and Democratic Senator Russ Feingold

Russ Feingold

Russell Dana "Russ" Feingold is an American politician from the U.S. state of Wisconsin. He served as a Democratic party member of the U.S. Senate from 1993 to 2011. From 1983 to 1993, Feingold was a Wisconsin State Senator representing the 27th District.He is a recipient of the John F...

introduced legislation demanding an exit strategy and a timetable for withdrawal of the American military forces and military contractors in Afghanistan. While noting Obama's promise to begin bringing some troops back in July 2010, Rep. McGovern said: "It's not only important to know when the first soldier is to be redeployed or brought home, it's important to know when the last soldier is as well."

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On July 1, 2010, the majority 60% of Democrat representatives in the House voted in favor of the legislation to require a timetable and plan for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. In all, 153 Democrats and 9 Republicans voted for the amendment. 93 Democrats and 7 Republicans also voted for an amendment from Rep. Barbara Lee

Barbara Lee

that would have required the war funds to be spent only on withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Nearly all Republicans opposed the amendments however, and neither passed.

In January 2011, Republican figure Grover Norquist

Grover Norquist

Grover Glenn Norquist is an American lobbyist, conservative activist, and founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform...

, founder of Americans for Tax Reform

Americans for Tax Reform

Americans for Tax Reform is an advocacy group and taxpayer group whose stated goal is "a system in which taxes are simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today. The government's power to control one's life derives from its power to tax...

, called on conservatives to have a conversation on the possibility of withdrawing from Afghanistan. He called attention to a nationwide poll of conservatives that showed that the majority 71% of self-identified conservative voters, including over two-thirds (67%) of Tea Party

Tea Party movement

The Tea Party movement is an American populist political movement that is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian, and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009...

supporters, are worried about the war's cost to taxpayers, and stated that, given the war's enormous price tag, it was time to consider leaving.

The same nationwide poll of conservatives, conducted in early January 2011, found that the majority two-thirds of conservative and Tea Party supporters call for a reduction of U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan (39% plurality) or a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan "as soon as possible" (27%). Only a minority 24% of conservative and Tea Party supporters think that the current levels of troops should be maintained.

In February 2011, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers again introduced legislation to end combat operations in Afghanistan and reduce spending of U.S. taxpayer dollars on the war. Led by Republican Congressmen Ron Paul

Ron Paul

of Texas, Walter Jones

Walter Jones

Walter Jones may refer to:* Walter Jones , British polo competitor at the 1908 Summer Olympics* Walter B. Jones , former State Geologist of Alabama...

of North Carolina, and Democrat Congresswoman Barbara Lee

Barbara Lee

of California, the amendment had 45 other co-sponsors. Republican congressmen opposed to the continued large-scale combat operations in Afghanistan convened a meeting for GOP members which had as principle speakers Americans for Tax Reform

Americans for Tax Reform

President Grover Norquist

Grover Norquist

Grover Glenn Norquist is an American lobbyist, conservative activist, and founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform...

, Maj. Gen. John Batiste

John Batiste

Major General John Batiste is a retired officer of the United States Army.John Batiste was commissioned as an infantry officer from West Point and served in five US Army heavy divisions over the next 31 years...

(ret.) and Lt. Col. Eric Egland (Reserve), a career intelligence officer with experience in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. According to numerous polls, the majority of Americans now want a faster withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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In February 2011, the Democratic National Committee

Democratic National Committee

The Democratic National Committee is the principal organization governing the United States Democratic Party on a day to day basis. While it is responsible for overseeing the process of writing a platform every four years, the DNC's central focus is on campaign and political activity in support...

passed a resolution calling for an acceleration of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Citing the Gallup poll released that month that found that the strong majority 72% of Americans favor action to "speed up the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan", the policy resolution called for "a swift withdrawal of US armed forces and military contractors in Afghanistan which must include a significant and sizable reduction no later than July 2011."

Concerns that the war could derail Obama's presidency

Many that have hopes in President Obama's presidency but oppose the war in Afghanistan are concerned that the war could derail plans for his presidency the way the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

ruined the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...

.

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Speaking against the war in Afghanistan, Senator Russ Feingold

Russ Feingold

said: "It doesn't make sense in the long run. It's going to be bad for the president politically, as well as being a very unwise policy in terms of our national security."