Was the Afghanistan War a failure? Not for the top five defense contractors and their shareholders.
If you purchased $10,000 of stock evenly divided among America’s top five defense contractors on September 18, 2001 — the day President George W. Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Afghanistan — and faithfully reinvested all dividends, it would now be worth $97,295.
In fact, defense stocks outperformed the stock market overall by 58 percent during the war in Afghanistan.
Now, cable news commentators with their own undisclosed ties to the defense industry are castigating President Joe Biden’s withdrawal. The Intercept is reporting on the disastrous corruption of the military-industrial complex and the crises it creates in pursuit of profit.
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The U.S.’s 20-year war in Afghanistan mostly remained on the media’s back burner in recent years — until Biden’s withdrawal forced it back into the headlines.
But at The Intercept, we’ve been reporting on the war’s catastrophic consequences, which American military and political leaders have consistently hidden from the public. We’ve revealed the brutal civilian toll of remote drone killings and the ruthless tactics of local death squads backed by the U.S.
And we’ve shown who profits from the war machine, from mercenaries like Erik Prince to surveillance device manufacturers whose biometric tools may have fallen into the hands of the Taliban.
We’re going to keep digging into the hidden toll of the Afghanistan War and how Afghans will continue to pay the price — even if the pundits in Washington, D.C., look away after the withdrawal.
