US can win Al-Qaeda war by just $50 million
By Zahid Malik (President and Editor-in-Chief Pakistan Observer)
The United States is caught in a Catch-22 situation vis-à-vis war on terror and is looking for some face saving mechanism to get out of the mess which has mind-boggling costs not only for the US but also for its allies. Defence analysts in Washington now openly say that the US war against Al-Qaeda, following 9/11 attacks on Twin Towers, has reached at a stage where Pentagon finds itself caught in a quagmire.
According to dependable estimates by some of the US think-tanks, the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached $ 1.05 trillion. Even after adjusting for inflation, that’s four times more than America spent on fighting World War I, and more than 10 times the cost of 1991’s Gulf War (90 per cent of which was paid by the US allies), the war on terror looks set to surpass the cost incurred on the Korean and Vietnam wars combined, to be topped only by World War II’s price tag of $3.5 trillion.
Read More »US can win Al-Qaeda war by just $50 million