Americans are rightly outraged the Taliban have seized tens of billions of dollars worth of U.S. military equipment following the United States’s disgraceful retreat from Afghanistan.
But don’t say the U.S. surrendered $80 billion in weapons and vehicles to the terrorist death-cult, says the Washington Post fact-checker. The dollar amount is actually more like $24 billion.
“ALL EQUIPMENT should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States, and that includes every penny of the $85 billion dollars in cost,” former President Donald Trump said in a statement on Aug. 30.
Not so fast, responded the Washington Post fact-checker, awarding the former commander in chief’s statement a full three Pinocchios.
“The $83 billion figure — technically, $82.9 billion — comes from an estimate in the July 30 quarterly report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) for all spending on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund since the U.S. invasion in 2001,” reports the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler. “A 2017 Government Accountability Office report estimated that about 29 percent of the funds spent on the Afghan security forces between 2005 and 2016 went to equipment and transportation. (The transportation costs related to transporting equipment and for contracted pilots and airplanes for transporting officials to meetings. There appears to be no way to segregate transportation spending.)”
He adds, “Using that same percentage, that would mean the equipment provided to Afghan forces amounted to $24 billion over 20 years. The GAO said approximately 70 percent of the equipment went to the Afghan military and the rest went to the national police (part of the Interior Ministry).”
The fact-check, which bears the headline, “No, the Taliban did not seize $83 billion of U.S. weapons,” is already being used by partisan activists as a cudgel against conservative politicians — as if the real issue is the exact number of billions of dollars of equipment and not the fact that the military just surrendered it amid a disorderly, haphazard retreat.
“Let me tell you,” Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana said this week of hurricane relief efforts in his state, “what would be a good start for the people of Louisiana: $85 billion worth of military equipment that was left behind in Afghanistan!”
In response, left-wing propaganda group The Recount shared the Washington Post fact-check on social media, saying, “Fact check: The Taliban did not seize $80+ billion worth of U.S. military equipment.”
The part left unsaid: The Taliban might have seized $24 billion in U.S. military equipment.
At least the Washington Post tried to track down and publish a more accurate number. But let’s keep some context here. As even the newspaper itself concedes, we’re not talking about the difference between a lot of money and a little money. We’re talking about the difference between tens of billions and tens of billions.
It’s kind of like the guy who gets upset that the world is going to end in 1 billion years, then feels comforted to learn that it’s more like 5 billion years. “Whew, that’s a relief!”
Yes, $24 billion is probably a more accurate number (it’s still just a guesstimate), but this doesn’t really change the nature of the complaint. The U.S., which finalized its chaotic, fatal, and frenzied withdrawal from Afghanistan this week, just handed the Taliban an amount of lethal equipment that can only be measured as a percentage of the Pentagon’s annual budget.
Falling down the rabbit hole of whether it was $24 billion, $50 billion, $65 billion, or even $80 billion feels a bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. An enemy is now in possession of premium, high-priced U.S. military equipment, including an estimated 43,000 pickup trucks, 22,000 Humvees, 900 Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, 600,000 weapons, and more than 200 aircraft, all paid for by taxpayers whom the Taliban want to kill.
