Basic Research Paper

This paper debates the positives and negative reasons the United States should leave Afghanistan. It has been nine years since the United States has entered Afghanistan and since then the top Al-Qaeda personnel have been defeated. The time for United States troops to return home has passed. Training the Afghanistan troops to defend and protect their country from the Al-Qaeda is progressing well. It has been a costly engagement, both monetarily and with military lives. For example, a number of the military have sustained severe injuries and loss of limbs. Military costs continue for the United States even when the soldiers come home because of psychological and medical expenses. When the military return home the funds that are going to pay for ammunition, fuel, and other expenses for the military being away from home could be routed to other areas to relieve the financial crisis of the United States.

In September 2009 Michael Hoh, a State Department official, resigned from his post because he does not believe in the current Afghanistan strategy issued by the Obama administration. "My resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end” (Hoh, 2011). After his resignation, Hoh started a website called A New Way Forward. The objective of this site is to dispel the myths about Afghanistan and replace them with factual information. For example, the United States of America has been at war in Afghanistan for over nine years. Within those years, the cost of the war exceeds $425 billion dollars (National Priorities Project, 2011). Currently we are in a recession with more and more Americans losing their jobs, we are fighting for clean energy and environmental protection, and in the next couple of days our federal government might shut down due to a budget crisis. Every day that we continue to stay in Afghanistan in the same capacity America must be losing millions of dollars. Those millions of dollars can be reallocated to help boost...