Afghanistan wave 4
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Overstretch answersAlt cause - Iraq Belasco 9. Amy Belasco. Specialist in US Defense Policy and Budget. The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf Estimates for Iraq and Afghanistan and Other Operations How much has Congress provided for each of the three operations launched since the 9/11 attacks—Iraq, Afghanistan and other GWOT, and enhanced security? Relying primarily on DOD data, congressional reports and other methods, CRS estimated the distribution of war-related funds appropriated for defense, foreign operations, and VA medical costs from the 9/11 attacks through the FY2009 supplemental (see Table 3). • $683 billion for Iraq (or 74%); • $227 billion for Afghanistan (or 22%); • $29 billion for enhanced security (3%); and • $5 billion unallocated (1%) (see Table 3). For FY2009, this includes appropriations from two acts—the FY2008/FY2009 Bridge Supplemental (H.R. 2642 /P.L. 110-252), and the FY2009 Supplemental (H.R. 2346 P.L. 111-32). Since the FY2003 invasion, DOD’s war costs have been dominated by Iraq. Costs for OEF have risen dramatically since FY2006 as troop levels and the intensity of conflict have grown. The cost of enhanced security in the United States has fallen off from the earlier years which included initial responses to the 9/11 attacks. Foreign and diplomatic operations costs peaked in FY2004 with the $20 billion appropriated for Iraq and Afghan reconstruction and since then run about $4 billion to $5 billion a year. Dollar decline and overstretch don’t threaten hegemony Levy and Brown 5. David H. Levey and Stuart S. Brown. March/April 2005. The Overstretch Myth. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/60615/david-h-levey-and-stuart-s-brown/the-overstretch-myth Would-be Cassandras have been predicting the imminent downfall of the American imperium ever since its inception. First came Sputnik and "the missile gap," followed by Vietnam, Soviet nuclear parity, and the Japanese economic challenge--a cascade of decline encapsulated by Yale historian Paul Kennedy's 1987 "overstretch" thesis. The resurgence of U.S. economic and political power in the 1990s momentarily put such fears to rest. But recently, a new threat to the sustainability of U.S. hegemony has emerged: excessive dependence on foreign capital and growing foreign debt. As former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has said, "there is something odd about the world's greatest power being the world's greatest debtor." The U.S. economy, according to doubters, rests on an unsustainable accumulation of foreign debt. Fueled by government profligacy and low private savings rates, the current account deficit--the difference between what U.S. residents spend abroad and what they earn abroad in a year--now stands at almost six percent of GDP; total net foreign liabilities are approaching a quarter of GDP. Sudden unwillingness by investors abroad to continue adding to their already large dollar assets, in this scenario, would set off a panic, causing the dollar to tank, interest rates to skyrocket, and the U.S. economy to descend into crisis, dragging the rest of the world down with it. Despite the persistence and pervasiveness of this doomsday prophecy, U.S. hegemony is in reality solidly grounded: it rests on an economy that is continually extending its lead in the innovation and application of new technology, ensuring its continued appeal for foreign central banks and private investors. The dollar's role as the global monetary standard is not threatened, and the risk to U.S. financial stability posed by large foreign liabilities has been exaggerated. To be sure, the economy will at some point have to adjust to a decline in the dollar and a rise in interest rates. But these trends will at worst slow the growth of U.S. consumers' standard of living, not undermine the United States' role as global pacesetter. If anything, the world's appetite for U.S. assets bolsters U.S. predominance rather than undermines it. ***Terrorism advantage answersAT: Terrorism advantageAl Qaeda isn’t the vital internal link to terrorism Sageman, 9 - adjunct Associate Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs and former case officer for the CIA (Marc, “Confronting al-Qaeda: Understanding the Threat in Afghanistan,” Perspectives on Terrorism, vol. 3 n.4, http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php?option=com_rokzine&view=article&id=92&Itemid=54) The above statistics are crystal clear: 78% of all global neo-jihadi terrorist plots in the West in the past five years came from autonomous homegrown groups without any connection, direction or control from al-Qaeda Core or its allies. The ‘resurgent al-Qaeda’ in the West argument has no empirical foundation. The paucity of actual al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorist organization plots compared to the number of autonomous plots refutes the claims by some heads of the Intelligence Community [4] that all Islamist plots in the West can be traced back to the Afghan Pakistani border. Far from being the “epicenter of terrorism,” this Pakistani region is more like the finishing school of global neo-jihadi terrorism, where a few amateur wannabes are transformed into dangerous terrorists. Counterterrorism is working now – al Qaeda is almost completely dead because of drones Sageman, 9 - adjunct Associate Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs and former case officer for the CIA (Marc, “Confronting al-Qaeda: Understanding the Threat in Afghanistan,” Perspectives on Terrorism, vol. 3 n.4, http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php?option=com_rokzine&view=article&id=92&Itemid=54) 5. Counter-terrorism is working. The escalation from a more limited and focused counter-terrorism strategy to a larger combined counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency strategy (in a country devoid of the al-Qaeda presence!) is predicated on the assumption that the terrorist threat is either stable or increasing – meaning that counter-terrorism has failed. The timeline graphs clearly show that the threat is fading, from its high water mark of 2004. There has been no global neo-jihadi terrorist casualty in the United States in the past eight years and none in the West in general in the past four years. Of course, al-Qaeda is not dead as long as its top leadership is still alive. This cannot be attributed to a loss of intent from al-Qaeda and its militant rivals. From all indications, including recent debriefs of terrorist wannabes captured in Pakistan and the West, the respective leaders of global neo-jihadi terrorism are still enthusiastically plotting to hit the West and do not hesitate to proclaim their desire on the Internet. Nor is this due to the counter-insurgency in Afghanistan because al-Qaeda and its allies all have their training facilities in Pakistan. It is due to effective counter-terrorism strategy, which is on the brink of completely eliminating al-Qaeda. A dead organization will not be able to return to Afghanistan. 6. The reasons for the effectiveness of the counter-terrorism strategy so far are multiple. First and foremost is al-Qaeda’s inability to grow. Unlike the pre-9/11/01 period, al-Qaeda leaders have generally not incorporated new recruits among its ranks. The leadership of al-Qaeda still harks back to the fight against the Soviets in the 1980s. Because he has been hiding full time, Osama bin Laden has not been able to appoint and train a new group of top leaders and there is no evidence that he trusts anyone whom he has not known from the anti-Soviet jihad. In the 1990s, al-Qaeda incorporated the brightest and most dedicated novices who came to train in its network of camps in Afghanistan. They became its cadres and trainers. In the past five years, al-Qaeda has not been able for the most part to incorporate new recruits among its ranks. Western novices traveling to Pakistan in the hope of making contact with al-Qaeda have been turned around and sent back to the West to carry out terrorist operations. Meanwhile, the success of the Predator drone strike campaign on the Pakistani border has dramatically thinned the ranks of both al-Qaeda leaders and cadres. Now it appears that these strikes are also targeting al-Qaeda allies with a transnational agenda. 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