Only one group has meaningfully benefited from 20-plus years of U.S. hyper-militarism—the war-profiteers. Here we’re talking truly mind-boggling numbers. Recent reports show that an investment of $10,000 in defense stocks when the war on terror began would now be worth almost $100,000.
As U.S. and Western forces gear up to depart from Afghanistan, the country’s more than 40-year war enters its next phase. This is nothing new for the Afghan people. In the course of a century, they have seen British and Soviet conquerors exit, leaving various would-be kings, power brokers and warlords to fill the vacuum. Through it all, it has been the Afghan people who suffer.