The American taxpayers have spent almost $1.7 trillion on the “war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Looking at the chart, it strikes me that most of the money, of course, went to the Department of Defense. Very little, the green bars, went to the Department of State and to aid. And the VA Medical bars are not even recognizable on the bottom.

Looking at the chart, I also notice that expenditures kept going up year after year during the Bush years, and down during the Obama years.

The “war on terror” was supposed to get rid of terrorism, or at least the threat of terrorism.

Yet, there are more terrorists now than ever. ISIS is trying to build a nation state based on terrorism. That’s far worse than anything we have ever had before. Some say we have created this situation with our war on terror. I don’t know if we did. But I do know there are now more terrorists, there are more attacks, and there are more terror-related atrocities than ever before.

We have gotten a very lousy return on our investment. I would venture to guess if we had spent $1.7 trillion in our own country in the last 14 years we’d be vastly better off today, and there would be less terrorists out there. We should have minded our own business.

I think about that as the warmongers (like McCain) are eager to get us militarily involved with the Russians in Ukraine.

Do we ever learn?