A few weeks ago, when the 20-year Afghanistan project first started to circle the drain, my friend, colleague, and Crow's Nest editor Jimmy Mengel asked me if I thought defense contractors would suffer as a result.
It was clear from his intonation that he thought they would.
I think my response caught him off guard because it was an emphatic "NO."
"I'm still bullish," I told him.
And I have every reason to be.
You may wonder how when this costly boondoggle, this $2 trillion trough (remember when the $2 trillion COVID stimulus was considered MASSIVE?) is no longer there for defense contractors to drink from.
Well, I'll tell you...
First, the big misconception (and I've seen this all over social media) is that defense contractors are the primary recipient of that money.
That's not true.
In truth, most of that money is spent on logistics - the needs of troops, such as food, clothing, housing, medical care, special pay, and benefits. In 2011, when the U.S. effort was at its most robust, we had 110,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan. And even after NATO formally ended its combat mission in December 2014, the alliance still retained a 13,000-strong force to help train Afghan forces and conduct counter-terrorism operations.
Supplying and sustaining that kind of force halfway around the world for two decades amounts to a tremendous fiscal burden.
There were a plethora of other money drains, too.
Official data shows that since 2002, the U.S. has spent $143.27 billion on reconstruction activities in Afghanistan. Nearly $36 billion was allocated for governance and development. And $19 billion was flat out lost to corruption, waste, and fraud.
So the notion that this war was some massive firehose blasting profits directly into the pockets of Big Defense is a lazy misconception manufactured by hippies.
Unfortunately, it's been a contagious smear, which has led Jimmy and many others to (quite fairly) surmise that the war's end will be some massive blow to the military industrial complex.
I assure you it won't be.
And that's perfectly clear if you just take a look at our nation's defense budget.
When Donald Trump left office he did so after raising our defense budget to its highest point in history - $705 billion.
And what did sweet old "Helicopter Joe" Biden ask for this year?
$715 billion.
That's right, he's trying to raise it another $10 billion. And he'll almost certainly succeed.
Why?