AS THE SHI'A AND KURDS HAVE SHOWN...:

There are innumerable reasons to oppose any continuation or escalation of the American occupation of Afghanistan. But disregarding the most important deterrent, the loss of human life, and even more specifically, innocent civilian life, there is one economic principle that screams out from the text of Trump's speech on Afghanistan: The sunk cost fallacy.

If I were to spend an exorbitant amount of money on a dress only to decide later on that I despise it for one reason or another, it would be a fallacy for me to believe that I must continue wearing the dress in order to take full advantage of the value I already spent on it. Sure, I spent too much up front, but why would I then cause myself further anguish just because of the initial mistake of purchasing the dress? I would be doubling my losses.

If the dress example is lost on you, imagine instead a Las Vegas buffet. To justify spending the high cost of entering a buffet in Vegas, you deduce that you must therefore stuff your face until it becomes physically impossible to ingest anything else into your body. Sure, you may have technically gotten your money's worth, but now you are also so sick and you have lost the entire evening you had planned.

Examples of the sunk cost fallacy exist all around us. You paid for a subscription to a bad online service so now you might as well use it (no, do not compound your error). You work so hard to get this man to fall in love with you, so you might as well stick with him, even though he is super lame (no, you should dump him). You spent so much money on a concert of a band that turns out to be terrible but you therefore must stay until the end (no, you should leave). You bought this movie ticket so you should stay to the end even though you hate every minute (walk out!).

All of this is fallacy. It is this belief that we are already in too deep, so we might as well double-down and keep going. Unfortunately, this almost always leads to further loss.

Trump's plan for Afghanistan is no different.

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