I’ve been avoiding the Post since they dumped Froomkin. Nonetheless, I found myself there this afternoon reading an article about the war games the Pentagon conducted to evaluate options in Afghanistan. In the process I stumbled across an interesting fact: each American soldier there costs us about a million bucks a year.

The administration’s internal deliberations have emphasized that unless the Afghan government dramatically improves its performance, the Taliban will continue to find support. Administration officials said Obama’s decision will consider a much broader range of options than the number of troops. At nearly every meeting in the White House Situation Room, McChrystal has been joined on the video screens at the end of the table by Karl W. Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, and Anne W. Patterson, his counterpart in Pakistan.

One question being debated is whether more U.S. troops would improve the performance of the Afghan government by providing an important check on corruption and the drug trade, or would they stunt the growth of the Afghan government as U.S. troops and civilians take on more tasks that Afghans might better perform themselves. Another factor is cost. The Pentagon has budgeted about $65 billion to maintain a force of about 68,000 troops, meaning that each additional 1,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan would cost about $1 billion a year.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think most of that money goes to the soldiers themselves. Rather, it seems to me, its purpose is to enrich those at the very top of the socioeconomic ladder through what Chomsky calls the Pentagon system. We hear complaints from the Republicans, the Chamber of Commerce, and the right-wing Christians — oops, sorry, I think the politically correct term is “social conservatives”, they’re trying to hide the fundamentalism part — about any program that helps the poor, the unemployed, the immigrants, or pretty much any group society has shunted aside. These whining worthies struggle each day to get ahead of everyone else; how would they benefit from assistance to those behind them? But aid to the top one percent is vital to the economy.

More broadly, the whole article perfectly illustrates Chomsky’s point about how our system controls discussion and prevents meaningful dissent. Any historian can tell you how likely it is that an invader will take control of Afghanistan. Yet the two options gamed out both call for an increase in American troops, one of 10,000 to 15,000, the other of 44,000. Nobody thinks either number is anywhere near close to enough to control the country; and the argument that if we leave the Taliban will take over and immediately re-invite al Qaeda to establish itself in Afghanistan is patently ridiculous. The relationship between the two groups has deteriorated; al Qaeda has bases in several other countries and doesn't need Afghanistan; and the Taliban wants control of Afghanistan far more than it wants to help al Qaeda.

Quite obviously, in other words, our million-dollar-a-year troops may be fighting and operating bravely and intelligently, but they’ll accomplish about as much as their counterparts did in Vietnam.

So why is Obama not considering the only reasonable option, getting our asses out now before we lose any more lives and money? Well, maybe he is. I’ve thought, and I’m not alone, that McChrystal’s pessimistic evaluation leaves room for Obama to decide to cut bait because any successful operation would be far too expensive. Whether that was McChrystal’s intent I obviously don’t know, but I hazard a guess that his actions reflect the influence of a book I think is famous among military officers, H.R. McMaster’s Dereliction of Duty. It describes how the top military brass failed the system when pressure was put on them from the White House and the Secretary of Defense. Because of that failure many people died, the United States was weakened in both military and world-standing terms, and the military went through a lot of soul-searching. Not that they decided to get out of the war business, you know, but they did consider alternative methods of pursuing it.

Will Obama assume the imperial mantle and try to hold onto Afghanistan until it destroys his Presidency? I expect so, but let us hope he’s not that wimpy.