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US wasting millions of dollars in Afghanistan

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US wasting millions of dollars in Afghanistan

A former Pentagon official criticized the U.S. military for building a new $34 million headquarters in Afghanistan, calling it extravagant and criminal.

The U.S. military built a fancy and modern 64,000-square-foot headquarters building in Afghanistan this year, equipped with all the necessary tools to fight a battle.

However, the U.S. military has probably no use for the base because it is withdrawing most of its forces from Afghanistan.

The amount of money that went into building the headquarters “mirrors the extravagant use of spending that went into the construction of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad,” Michael Maloof said on Wednesday.

“This raises some very serious questions on who makes these decisions for spending all this millions and millions of dollars that’s just going to be destroyed,” he added.

Maloof said an example of America’s wasteful spending is the destruction of an estimated $7 billion worth of vehicles and other military equipment in Afghanistan that the military will not ship back to the U.S.

Military planners have determined that they will not ship back about 20 percent of what the U.S. military has in Afghanistan because they would be too costly to ship back home, according to The Washington Post.

“From the U.S. tax payer’s standpoint, that is a total waste and is uncalled for and demonstrates a total lack of any kind of preplanning by responsible individuals,” Maloof said. “To destroy and have these buildings go to waste is also a crime.”

According to a study by Harvard scholar Linda Bilmes in March, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will cost the U.S. between $4 trillion and $6 trillion in the long term.

An Associated Press analysis in March showed that the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next 100 years.

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