Combined, more than 6,600 U.S. service members have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan combined, according to The Washington Post website’s Faces of the Fallen page.

The Iraq war alone had a price tag of $2 trillion, according to a National Public Radio staff report and another $60 billion spent on rebuilding their country. The report also said the war claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians.

Washington Post correspondent Ernesto Londono covered the 10-year anniversary in Baghdad.

In the NPR report, Londono said, after exhausting all of these lives and resources, there is little to show for it.

“It’s really striking to contemplate how invisible the American footprint has become here,” he said.

“You look at the neighborhoods where Americans invested a lot of money and there’s very little that is visible.”

Each year, more than 100 different countries receive around $50 billion in aid from the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, according to www.usaid.gov.

We can no longer afford this foreign policy’s vicious cycle of conflict making, nation building and walking away. We’re going bankrupt — fiscally and morally.

According to a www.washingtonpost.com article, the U.S. national debt is currently more than $16 trillion.

There is one easy solution to both of these problems — the United States of America must begin colonization and eventual annexation of the countries we destroy and rebuild.

Colonies established in stabilized regions will become new sources of tax revenue rather than a drain on the federal budget. The taxes collected in each country can go directly to rebuilding that particular country.

In this way, we could not only avoid picking up the tab on future nation-building projects but we also can reduce the risk of foreign aid dollars ending up in the pockets of corrupt local politicians.

American corporations also could have exclusive access to the natural resources of new colonies. This would help make the U.S. into the greatest economic powerhouse the world has ever known. We already have one of the largest standing military forces that’s trained and equipped to be the best in the world. Who could stand against a true American empire — Russia, China, North Korea?

The Cold War is over, North Korea is a joke and the People’s Republic of China is probably concocting a new-age global domination plot of their own at this very moment. We can’t let a country with a history of human rights violations like China beat us to the punch.

Colonization is a chance for the U.S. to pass on its concepts of law, equality and human rights. Not only would we be saving money, but we’d also be saving lives.

So, what can regular people, such as ourselves, do to move this agenda forward?

I won’t my waste time trying to get you to write your U.S. Representative or something like that. We’d be waiting forever if we wait for our government to realize this is the only way out of our current predicament.

No. Action must be taken by the people. As many U.S. citizens as possible need to move to these newly stabilized regions. Never mind the danger — we must take this risk for the future of our country.