Withdrawing from Afghanistan is hindering U.S. military readiness. That proves why it’s the right move.

The price tag may surprise many who haven’t followed defense budgets closely. Retired Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, said this year’s defense budget should be $778 billion, nearly $63 billion higher than President Biden has requested. Spoehr says that figure should then be increased by 3 percent over inflation for each of the next five years. Even that might not be enough. Mackenzie Eaglen, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, notes that in 2017, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis testified that 3 to 5 percent real growth was needed to put the military on track. That means as much as 7 percent annual growth (assuming 2 percent inflation), which would amount to more than $50 billion in additional spending a year, for the foreseeable future. That would push annual defense expenditures to more than $1 trillion by the mid-2020s.