Rosemary Chakraborty, Director of the Council in America’s Future, was very clear: “We think it’s in our financial interest to do this as soon as possible because it creates the political pressure to end the war in Afghanistan that is coming from the American people. Most of the politicians, the major pollsters, the pundits and the journalists, they have absolutely no idea of the extent of the public fatigue with the war in Afghanistan.” According to Chakraborty, by shifting their focus, the Obama Administration was “trying to help create the political pressure to end the Afghan war. When the public is tired.” Since 2009 the US military has been sending “significantly fewer troops to Afghanistan.”

Despite a decrease in US troop strength and the withdrawal of most US forces, the Taliban has made advances in the country. In 2010 Taliban forces held their first successful major assault since launching their campaign against the Afghan government in 2001. In one month alone, from Feb. 11-14, 2010, the Taliban launched a series of assaults across the country, forcing the American military to abandon Kabul in order to combat the rising insurgency. This year, the Taliban has also launched attacks throughout the country; they were able to take advantage of growing Afghan unrest in order to take full control of large sections of Afghanistan.

While the war in Afghanistan is a losing one, the Bush Administration continues to have enormous sway in the American military establishment. Since the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military command structure has grown increasingly militarized to increase the capability of the US to confront and attack enemies around the world and expand their global empire. This is what has recently happened with the rise of the “boots on the ground” concept at the center of US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As if to underscore the growing military-political domination of the US, the Obama Administration has spent over $1 trillion in the first four years of the Obama presidency on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The US Congressional Budget Office estimates Afghanistan cost US taxpayers more than $2.3 trillion over those four years. By 2010, US taxpayers spent an additional $2.3 trillion on war in Iraq and Libya. By the end of 2011, the total cost had reached $6.2 trillion. Thus, with this enormous spending, the US is currently paying far more in costs to wage its overseas wars than its government budget is receiving in tax revenue.

But this staggering over