The Afghanistan military is getting more than three times the American taxpayer funding than the construction of a wall on the United States-Mexico border, thanks to a Republican-Democrat spending package.
A Defense Department budget approved by House and Senate lawmakers, and set to be signed by President Donald Trump, is dishing out more than three times as much funding to the Afghanistan military as it is providing to build barriers to stop illegal immigration at the southern border.
In total, American taxpayers are forced to subsidize nearly $4.2 billion in costs that will go towards the “Afghanistan Security Forces Fund” to fund the Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police, the Afghan Air Force, and the Afghan Special Security Forces.
Compare that funding to the less than $1.4 billion that is explicitly allocated to build barriers at the U.S.-Mexico border to stop the massive annual inflow of illegal immigration that drives up foreign labor market competition against America’s working and middle class.
The funding for Afghanistan’s military also comes after an investigation by the Washington Post exposed how the federal government, for two decades, allegedly lied to the American public about the progress being made in the region and the neoconservative national security establishment’s effort to transform the country into a Western-style democracy.
“Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public,” the Washington Post investigation details. “They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at the White House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States was winning the war when that was not the case.”
Former President George W. Bush led the U.S. into war in Afghanistan and Iraq with more than 4,500 Americans dying in Iraq — including more than 3,500 killed in combat — and up to 205,000 Iraqi citizens dying in the war since March 2003. Bush’s post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and intervention in Pakistan have resulted in the deaths of between 480,000 and 507,000 people — including nearly 7,000 American soldiers who had deployed to those regions.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.