Politics & Power Quote by Camille Paglia

Paglia’s line lands like a guillotine dropped on the euphemisms of “mission” and “credibility.” The phrasing is calculatedly transactional: “price,” “lives,” “treasure.” It refuses the sacred language that usually protects foreign policy from moral accounting. By measuring Afghanistan in costs rather than ideals, she forces a taboo comparison - not whether the war was noble, but whether it was worth it. That bluntness is the point: it punctures the idea that continuing is automatically more honorable than leaving.

The subtext is an indictment of elite storytelling. “Our presence” sounds bureaucratic, deliberately deflating the romance of nation-building and replacing it with the reality of an indefinite occupation. She’s also smuggling in a hierarchy of obligation: the U.S. government’s first duty is to its own citizens, especially those asked to bleed for strategies that keep mutating. “Any more” implies patience has been exhausted; whatever justification once existed has depreciated, and persistence becomes vanity.

Contextually, this hits the late-stage Afghanistan debate, when the war’s rationale had shifted from retaliation to counterinsurgency to state-building to “preventing collapse,” each reframing buying time but not clarity. Paglia’s provocation isn’t pacifism so much as anti-sentimentality: she treats war as a ledger, daring readers to admit that sunk costs aren’t virtues. The sting comes from her refusal to offer a comforting alternative narrative; she’s not promising triumph, only insisting that continuing to pay is its own form of moral failure.