Out of Afghanistan---out of endless war

The following quote, from Alternet, shows three things to me.
First, it shows me, yet again, how and why we need to cut defense spending.
Second, it proves further that we need to get out of Afghanistan.
Finally, it shows me what a crazy "military-industrial complex" we've become as a nation and how we need to somehow undo that.
The quote:


The Associated Press covered U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry's announcement that a $511 million contract had been awarded to Caddell Construction, one of America’s “largest construction and engineering groups,” for a massive expansion of the U.S. embassy in Kabul.  According to the ambassador, that embassy is already “the largest... in the world with more than 1,100 brave and dedicated civilians... from 16 agencies and working next to their military counterparts in 30 provinces,” and yet it seems it’s still not large enough.


Half a billion dollars, ladies and gentlemen, to make what is already the largest "embassy" in the world, according to this, even larger.
As if that weren't bad enough--remember the huge "embassy" we built in Iraq?  From the same article, read on:


On 104 acres of land in the heart of the Iraqi capital (always referred to in news reports as almost the size of Vatican City), it was slated to cost $590 million. (Predictable cost overruns and delays -- see F-35 above -- would, in the end, bring that figure to at least $740 million, while the cost of running the place yearly is now estimated at $1.5 billion.)


But wait, there's more.  They aren't done yet:  


By May 2009, with Barack Obama in the White House, I knew as much.  That was when two McClatchy reporters broke a storyabout a similar project for a new “embassy” in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, at the projected cost of $736 million (with a couple of hundred million more slated for upgrades of diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan).


A third nearly one billion dollar "embassy" right next door, in Pakistan.

Does this make sense?  Any sense?
Do you like how your taxes are being spent?
Is this the country we want to be?
Surely, clearly the answer to all these questions is no.  
We need to change this.  We need to fight for these huge changes so we quit this, as a country.
And we need to start today.


Links:  http://www.alternet.org/world/148848/the_evidence_is_overwhelming:_we_aren't_getting_out_of_afghanistan_or_even_iraq
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1844674517/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2010/10/digging-in-for-the-long-haul-in-afghanistan-.html#readmore