Over $2.2 trillion was spent, with over 2,400 dead US service members, and the Taliban retained power in Afghanistan. That is the legacy of the US’s longest undeclared war. American policymakers should have realized that nation-building is to war and geopolitics what central planning is to economics: a recipe for costly failure. Vast amounts of blood and treasure are gone and it isn’t clear whether today’s war hawks have learned that lesson.
On October 7, 2001, American bombs began to rain down on Kabul, Afghanistan. Just over a month later, the city fell and in December, the Taliban were routed in the stronghold of Kandahar. If these victories were the only objective of US policymakers, the campaign would have been a success. But that wasn’t all that President George W. Bush and his advisers had in mind.
In a joint session of Congress on September 20, Bush declared, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda,” adding, “but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” The House of Representatives had already voted 420 to 1 to authorize force against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The open-ended objective issued by Congress and the global mission envisioned by the commander-in-chief were expansive. Federal legislators, the chief executive, and the American public alike failed to grasp what would be sacrificed over the next two decades in pursuit of these unclear goals.
The Constitution gives Congress alone the power to declare war. It didn’t use that prerogative and has not since 1942. The same document provides a far narrower and much less costly solution to international conflict. That remedy has remained unused by Congress since the War of 1812: a letter of marque and reprisal.
Three days after the Kabul bombing campaign began, the oft-ignored Texas Representative Ron Paul introduced a bill to deploy this power. The September 11 Marque and Reprisal Act would have commissioned privately armed personnel to seize Osama bin Laden and his co-conspirators, and their property. The projected cost was no more than $40 billion. Paul routinely reminded fellow legislators and the public about the history of government mission creep and ever-expanding human and financial costs. His proposal would have meant no occupation, no reconstruction, and no nation-building. The bill never left committee.
Letters of marque provide a specific target, appropriation, and objective: in the case of Bin Laden, to “punish, deter, and prevent” “air piracy” and “other acts of war.” The recipient is paid for specific results and absorbs the cost of failure. Appropriations, by contrast, have unspecified goals and potential funding renewals, which may actually increase if objectives are not met. Those spending America’s wealth are insulated from failure and double down with even greater spending when objectives aren’t met.
California Representative Barbara Lee saw other problems ahead as the fog of war set in. She was the lone “nay” vote against House Joint Resolution 64, the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. She argued that the 60-word resolution was far too broad to approve and warned against the nearly unchecked authority to wage war against unspecified enemies. Lee called for deeper consideration of the long-term implications of the bill. She also famously cautioned, “As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, ‘As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.’” The tragic civilian deaths on 9/11 were exceeded fifteenfold in Afghanistan.
In the long run, both Paul and Lee were proven right. These representatives’ constitutional, moral, and financial objections were all dismissed. The costs of hubris were staggering:
- $530 billion in interest payments on additional debt
- $296 billion for veterans’ care, with costs continuing to accrue
- $933 billion in Department of Defense overseas contingency operations
- $443 billion in Department of Defense base-budget war increases
- $59 billion in State Department expenditures
The effort didn’t fail for lack of spending, firepower, or military will. It failed because nation-building became the focus. The Afghan experience showed military advisers and four presidential administrations what economists have known for decades: Washington, DC can’t plan outcomes for its own citizens effectively. How much less can it be done across the globe, for a culture and people openly hostile to that plan?
DC operatives could count the number of schools built and local soldiers trained, but couldn’t discern whether that was valued by people they didn’t know. They lacked the only mechanism we have to communicate that value: prices emerging through voluntary exchange. The people of Afghanistan clearly didn’t value US goals to the extent that the Pentagon did and weren’t concerned with the costs to US taxpayers. The costs to them were counted not primarily in dollars, but in lives, with over 45,000 civilians lost.
After years of upheaval, the people of that beleaguered nation seem to have preferred normalcy above all, even if it meant Taliban rule. That became all too obvious in August 2021, as the Biden administration conducted a hasty withdrawal, leaving behind massive amounts of military equipment that couldn’t meet DC’s objectives, but now meet those of the revived Afghan leadership.
Twenty-five years later, the Taliban once again rules from Kabul. Few argue that the US and its Congress should have done nothing in response to 9/11. But clear policy alternatives existed, were presented, and were cast aside. Ron Paul offered unique constitutional paths; they were ignored. Barbara Lee’s eloquent warning that Congress was surrendering its constitutional responsibility to the executive branch went unheeded. The costs, in both financial and human terms, cannot be dismissed. The current administration would do well to consider these expensive, unintended outcomes, both known and unknowable, and check its current military adventurism.
