The war in Afghanistan is generating barely a whisper in the presidential election, says an Associated Press article published in papers this morning.

The article goes on the say that “Americans show more interest in the economy and taxes than the latest suicide bombings in a different, distant land.”

Some dots need to be connected here. The article claims that voters and candidates aren’t talking about the war, which is true. It hasn’t been a fixture of the 2012 campaigns like it, and the Iraq war, were in 2008. But if people are going to talk about taxes, they need to at least realize that the war is a factor.

The National Priorities Project keeps a real-time tab of the costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Over the past 11 years, they’ve cost over $1.3 trillion. The Afghanistan war is responsible for more than $558.8 billion of that sum, and the cost is accruing at thousands of dollars per second.

That money all comes from taxpayers, or will at some point. An infographic on the White House website says that the wars are responsible for $1.4 trillion of the national debt. Taxes will pay back that debt, with interest.