wasting Federal money ("nation" state charity) begins at home

Here's one to get you at it: Spending on the Afghanistan occupation has been recently quoted at $102 billion, by John Sopko, Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. This does not count the cost of bullets or ongoing security. This about the same size of the state debt of Utah ($22bn)Arizona ($50bn) and Kansas ($27bn. The war in Iraq has been calculated at c. $2 trillion (Source: Cost of War Project" Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. This is more than the size of the state debt of Texas ($270bn) California ($420bn) Florida ($153bn) New York ($348bn) Illinois ($154bn) and Michigan ($76bn). Exactly why is it better to go round killing people overseas rather than paying off debt at home and allowing states to do the reconstruction that is badly needed?