Wars have long been weighed by their expenditure of “blood and treasure”—their human and financial costs. Indeed, Donald Trump has long used the phrase as a metric to judge the wisdom of deploying U.S. forces, dating to his 2013 critiques of the war in Afghanistan. Now Trump has launched his own military operation in which the United States is outspending its opponent by several orders of magnitude. History suggests that a decision point is coming soon: escalate or go home.

Debates over the legality of U.S. military strikes o n alleged drug-smuggling boats have obscured calculations of their cost. And while no U.S. casualties have been reported during Operation Southern Spear, which has killed 87 claimed enemy combatants so far , the campaign is consuming far more American treasure

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