Paying for a war on credit, not in cash:
Amount that President Truman temporarily raised top tax rates to pay for Korean War: 92 percent.

Amount that President Johnson temporarily raised top tax rates to pay for Vietnam War: 77 percent.

Amount that President George W. Bush cut tax rates for the wealthiest, rather than raise them, at outset of Afghanistan and Iraq wars: At least 8 percent.

Estimated amount of direct Afghanistan and Iraq war costs that the United States has debt-financed as of 2020: $2 trillion.

Estimated interest costs by 2050: Up to $6.5 trillion.

The wars end. The costs don’t:
Amount Bilmes estimates the United States has committed to pay in health care, disability, burial and other costs for roughly 4 million Afghanistan and Iraq veterans: more than $2 trillion.

Period those costs will peak: after 2048.

I remember going through the phones of the people we detained and finding clip after clip of Bollywood musicals, women singing in fields of flowers

Rarely did I find anything incriminating
I remember finding propaganda footage cut together from the Soviet invasion and our own Operation Enduring Whatever

And laughing about how stupid the Afghans were to not know we aren't the Russians

And then eventually realizing I was the stupid one
I remember how every year the US would have to decide how to deal with the opium fields

You could let them alone, and then the Taliban would shake the farmers down and use the money to buy weapons

Or you could carpet bomb the fields and then the farmers would join the Taliban
Or you could give the farmers fertilizer as an incentive to grow wheat instead of opium poppy, and the farmers would sell the fertilizer to the Taliban, who used it to make explosives for IEDs that could destroy a million dollar MRAP and maim everyone inside

Quote by Scoopster:
(btw, don't tell you-know-who but I'm still planning to bake 'em a peanut butter chocolate cheesecake for their birthday)