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An Olympic Effort? Not exactly
August 27, 2008 | Posted by Kip - 11:37pm | 16 Comments
Sports writing often compares great contests to epic battles.
But perhaps in our efforts in Afghanistan, the reverse is a better comparison.
Reporting on the Beijing Olympics puts China's expenditure on those games at about $44 billion.
Meanwhile, total US expenditure on aid to Afghanistan barely merits a place on the podium: a total of $26 billion in seven years.
Of course, we have come nowhere near the Marshall plan promised Afghanistan in 2002--an effort whose proportions are worthy of consideration as we try to correct course. One year of the Marshall Plan (1948-1949) cost approximately $7.4 billion. A similar effort in today's dollars would cost just over $64 billion (adjusted by the Consumer Price Index), or put differently, $14 billion more than the total requested by the Afghan government in the Afghanistan National Development Strategy over the course of five years instead of one.
This would not cost nearly as much as the Marshall Plan as a share of the GDP. A nation at war spending similarly in order to support its security in response to the largest attack on US soil in history would have to fork out in assistance about $382 Billion--1.5 to 2 times the annual cost of the first major US tax cuts in a time of war.
But perhaps in our efforts in Afghanistan, the reverse is a better comparison.
Reporting on the Beijing Olympics puts China's expenditure on those games at about $44 billion.
Meanwhile, total US expenditure on aid to Afghanistan barely merits a place on the podium: a total of $26 billion in seven years.
Of course, we have come nowhere near the Marshall plan promised Afghanistan in 2002--an effort whose proportions are worthy of consideration as we try to correct course. One year of the Marshall Plan (1948-1949) cost approximately $7.4 billion. A similar effort in today's dollars would cost just over $64 billion (adjusted by the Consumer Price Index), or put differently, $14 billion more than the total requested by the Afghan government in the Afghanistan National Development Strategy over the course of five years instead of one.
This would not cost nearly as much as the Marshall Plan as a share of the GDP. A nation at war spending similarly in order to support its security in response to the largest attack on US soil in history would have to fork out in assistance about $382 Billion--1.5 to 2 times the annual cost of the first major US tax cuts in a time of war.
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