Day 6 - My Birthday!

I normally don't make a huge fuss about my birthday, but hey, it's really the only thing I'm doing today, so what the heck. Happy Birthday to me. I'm now 41. Mid-life if I make it to 82. Hopefully I'll do a bit better than that, but one never knows. I think the down days in this environment are harder than the work days. At least you have something to make the time pass when you're working.

I slept in until about 8:30, rolled out of bed and went to yoga class. I really have to put together my own routine so I can increase the number of sessions I do. My back is a bit better afterwards. Seems that everyone I talk to feels the same about these mattresses. I guess no mattress would be worse, but I'm not so sure having slept on this one for a week.

After my post a few days ago I was a bit introspective about the cost of this war. Then I thought about the title I chose for the blog. Gina and I love to travel, and we've used the "Pick your place on some number of dollars per day" books quite a lot. The less you spend, the more you can travel. So I thought the blog's title would be a bit funny until I thought about the reality. While me being here isn't costing me anything directly, it is costing all of us plenty. By us I mean pretty much every US tax payer.

According to this link, the cost for one soldier for one year in Afghanistan averages about $1 million, or approximately $2,740.00 per day. Wow, I didn't know I was worth that much. So, I'll be here for 62 days (really about 70 with travel, but let's be conservative), or just about 17% of the year. So my cost to the US tax payer is $170,000.00 to be here. I promise I'll do everything I can to earn my pay, but I must be honest, I'm not sure I can do enough to equal that sum. Nevertheless, you have my word that I'll try.

By the way, even if the above estimate is off, it really does make for nice math, so I'm going to stick with it. The FY2010 budget request for the war in Afghanistan is $300 Billion. This is just from the DoD, not any of the money any other agencies are requesting or spending. Open source news reports put the US troop level here at 68,000 starting 2010, with another 30,000 due in by summer. Let's round up to 100,000 US troops here. So, the $300 Billion budget request, divided by the 100k troops makes it about $3 Million per soldier. However, assume we spend 2/3 of that money buying weapons, paying the Afghan Army, reconstruction projects, etc., then the $1 Million per soldier estimate seems like it might be in the ball park.

While looking around at web sites discussing the costs of our two wars, I stumbled across widely varying sources. I must say, this link posted on the Federation of American Scientists site seems the most reliable. It is a very informed document, which was prepared by the Congressional Research Service for the members of Congress. I guess we can't get much more authoritative than that unless we go through all the US government's credit card receipts and add up all the bills. After watching Gina get ready for taxes this year, I want no part of that.

Since it is Jumah, and I'm off today, I'll make this a short post. Take care and wish me a happy birthday if you get a chance.