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As of Monday, the average American taxpayer will have paid nearly $7,500 to fund the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria since the 9/11 attacks, according to previously unreported Pentagon budget data sent to Congress this summer.

This fiscal year, each U.S. taxpayers will pay about $289 for both wars, according to the Defense Department data. Next year — fiscal 2018 — that number would drop to $281 per taxpayer, if Congress were to pass the White House’s spending request unchanged, which won’t happen. And there’s another reason that number is likely to change: the Trump administration’s plan to send more American troops to Afghanistan.

Americans paid the most for the wars in 2010, an average of $767 apiece. The annual amount declined through 2016 to $204 per taxpayer, before growing again as the U.S. ramped up its airstrike campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

These were "wars" in lower case.

A limited war will limit your chance to win.

The U.S. should never go to war without overwhelming force, without clear and practical milestones on what "victory" looks like, without a plan to leave quickly, and without taking some of the "winnings" (e.g., oil) to compensate taxpayers.

Well, it looks like Rip Van Forbes just woke up from a 70-year sleep.

The world has changed since WWII, johnny. Groups like ISIS are not states that can be overrun and defeated quickly. They are global now and they are an idea. You ought to know how difficult it is to defeat an idea. You can't wage unlimited war against an idea. It can't be done.

And their resources (like oil) already belong to someone else. ISIS stole them in the first place. If we steal them as well, then we're no better than ISIS as far as the host country is concerned.

21st Century, johnny. Wake up from your quaint antique fantasy and smell the shitty reality.

I've been awake, but perhaps the Pentagon has not.

Each and every word I posted above holds true.