I can't believe the military weighs so much money. Yeah! That money should have been spent fighting the war in Afghanistan! Then we might have won! Right? Let's start with the history. In the late 1970s, the US was still recovering from our disastrous involvement in Vietnam. Seeking to undermine the economic and social fabric of the USSR, the Carter administration hatched a plan. We could give Russia its own Vietnam war. So after Russia invaded Afghanistan, our government funded an Afghani rebel group known as the Mujahideen. To fight the Soviets and keep them entrenched in an unwinnable quagmire. And it worked! The Afghanistan war turned out to be a complete disaster for the USSR. And it contributed to their collapse. The rebel group which we created and funded split into multiple new extremist groups, the Taliban being one of them. The Taliban? As in, the people we fought in Afghanistan? And bo- We needed to fight those guys! They attacked us on 9-11! The Taliban had nothing to do with the 9-11 terror attacks. We went to war in Afghanistan because the Taliban, who controlled the region with our support, wanted to negotiate the extradition of bin Laden. President Bush refused and sought regime change in the capital of Kabul instead. That was 20 years ago. We killed bin Laden 10 years ago. Did it really make sense for us to continue fighting for a regime change against the rebel group we helped create because they wouldn't give up a terrorist who'd been dead for a decade? Fair enough! If the US just went in and brought justice to the people who attacked us, I could understand that. But our goal morphed into turning Iraq and Afghanistan into western-style democracies. The unwinnable mission in Afghanistan cost us $2 trillion. And it's resulted in the deaths of at least 238,000 people, including 71,000 civilians and over 2,000 American soldiers. Okay, that's pretty messed up. But how could we pull out after everything our soldiers had sacrificed? Now you get where you're coming from. I deeply respect them. But no one should have to go through the things we've put our veterans through to fight these impossible wars. It's as bad for them and America as it was for the USSR. Oh, come on. It's not like we're on the verge of economic and social collapse. Right? Thank you so much for watching. Please like, share, and subscribe to the channel. Also, check out the links in the description because we bring the receipts and leave a comment below. We'll see you on the next wonderful, exhilarating episode of Common Sense Outbox. Check it out.