Not to mention the other 83+ billion we spent on non military aid in Afghanistan prior to 2006

Forever war is now the de facto national policy because of the jobs, promotions, and immense profits it generates for those who can buy influence in the White House and Congress (irrespective of party). Did you notice that last March, President Obama declared, via executive order, that Venezuela is an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States"? We are very good at imagining and creating enemies.

Most of the money that America and their alliance spent for the reconstruction of Afghanistan was waste. Because , they all failed to maintain security. The roads, schools ,hospitals, and all other reconstructions have been already destroyed by insurgents. At the time they so called constructed these there were no security as well , the engineers and supervision team never been there. SIGAR still not able to investigate billions of dollars projects in remote areas of Afghanistan because of security reasons. they all blame in this case , they waste American taxpayers money but did nothing for poor Afghan people , they people of Afghanistan are still struggling and if you ask them, majority of Afghan population will easily say, what are you talking about?? No one spent a cent for Afghanistan then why are you talking about the percentage of the waste.
Do they learn from the mistake? I do not think so , it is all happening and will be continue.......

ProPublica's bald-faced advocacy misses a few points. All those progressive leftists you had us elect were for the war lock, stock and barrel.

The arrogant arm-chair invitation by graduates of liberal-league universities to second guess how the funds would have been better spent leaves no options on the table for conducting a war differently. It's just "poof war no more" as if they would have not agreed with everyone else that something had to be done in Sept. 2001 about military training camps operating in the open, preparing fighters to conduct effective operations in the U.S. and almost anywhere else in the world.

Rather than doing the hard work of looking at military policies and how the war effort lost its edge, perhaps analyzing Congressional oversight during the years Bush and Obama ran the war, these lollipop writers would just have us take the money back and pretend we could have spent it elsewhere.

What this kind of naive game playing does is it fails to ask what would have happened if that money had been spent on kiddies romper rooms and handouts to dot-com startups. What would have happened if the training camps had been allowed to continue operations? What if Bin Laden were allowed the latitude to act like any other global military leader, perhaps appearing on CNN to tell his side of the story?

While Propublica's cadre of arm-chair bureaucrats presumes their money would have been better spent on lollipops, bottled water and flu shots, they fail to consider the same lackluster type of bureaucratic minds would have administered their lollipop and bottled water literacy programs.

It's easy to compare what was with what could have been when what could have been lives only in the uncomplicated world of somebody's imagination. It is much more difficult to address the real difficulties that complicate administration of progressive plans in a conflicted worlds. It appears the mediocre minds that aspire to careers in journalism are not up to the latter task.

If the USA had gone to every house in Afghanistan, and opened a bank account in the name of that family, then deposited those billions of dollar each-and-every month into the accounts of those families, the people of Afghanistan would love America today and in the future.

This should not simply be considered just a waste of US taxpayer money, government corruption or fraud. This is a crime against humanity and the Afghan people are the ones stuck suffering due to government crimes.

at best the Afghans are early iron age savages. I had no expectations