US military planes have carried the last US service members and diplomats from Kabul’s airport, ending America’s longest war. Ordinary Americans closely watched the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, as they did the start of the war nearly 20 years ago, in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks. But Americans often tended to forget about the
The Ghost Budget: How U.S. war spending went rogue, wasted billions, and how to fix it harvard.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from harvard.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The post-9/11 war funding pattern was completely different. For the first time since the American Revolutionary War, war costs were covered almost entirely by debt. There were no wartime tax increases or cuts in spending. Quite the reverse a “culture of endless money” inside the Pentagon. the ability to keep borrowing and spending with minimal…
DC anti-war protest via Flickr By Linda Bilmes / Just Security The post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were enabled by a historically unprecedented combination of budgetary procedures and financing methods. Unlike all previous U.S. wars, the post-9/11 wars were funded without higher taxes or non-war budget cuts, and through a separate budget. This set of circumstances – one that I have termed the “Ghost Budget” – enabled successive administrations to prosecute the wars with limited