The True Cost Of America�s Wars

The True Cost Of America�s Wars

During his speech on Afghanistan June 22, President Obama revealed
that �Over the last decade, we have spent a trillion dollars on war.�
He knew this was a deceptive understatement, as did everyone who keeps
close watch on the Bush-Obama wars all these years.  Few Americans ,
however, have closely followed Washington�s 21st century wars of
choice, so a trillion probably sounds right to them, but that amount
in 10 years � when the annual cost of air conditioning alone for the
U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq amounts to $20.2 billion a year � is  way
off base.

(It�s difficult to conceive of one trillion, so we�ll repeat a method
we�ve used before: Sixty seconds comprise a minute. One million
seconds  comes out to be about 11� days. A billion seconds is 32
years. And a trillion seconds is 32,000 years.)

The latest objective estimate for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
made public June 29, is between $3.7 trillion and $4.4 trillion
(140,800 years), according to the research project �Costs of War� by
Brown University�s Watson Institute for International Studies.  The
university assembled a team of economists, anthropologists, political
scientists, legal experts, and a physician to do this analysis, which
included future costs for veterans care and interest on war debts to
be paid over the next few decades.

The medical costs are huge. �While we know how many U.S. soldiers have
died in the wars (just over 6,000),� the report pointed out, �what is
startling is what we don�t know about the levels of injury and illness
in those who have returned from the wars. New disability claims
continue to pour into the VA, with 550,000 just through last fall.�
This doesn�t even include the thousands of deaths and injuries among
quasi-military contractors. There are about as many contractors as
troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It�s impossible to precisely predict
the interest costs on these wars. In 2010, $400 billion of our tax
money went toward paying off past war debts as far back as the Korean
War of the early 1950s. We�ll pay war debts indefinitely because
Washington is always borrowing to plan for or start new wars. So far,
the U.S.-led NATO war for regime change in Libya is costing American
taxpayers about a billion. The Pentagon has blueprints ready for many
different kinds of future wars, from small counter-terrorism
escapades, to cyberspace and outer space conflicts, to nuclear war,
all the way up to World War III.

The Brown University figures may turn out to be underestimates. A few
independent studies over the years have been somewhat higher but were
brushed aside by the White House and the mass media. This may happen
to the Brown calculations as well. The respected Nobel Prize-winning
economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Professor Linda Bilmes wrote a
book three years ago estimating the cost of the Iraq war only, based
on data collected in 2006. It was titled �The Three Trillion Dollar
War.� They based their calculations on the �hidden� costs of the war
that include enormous medical care expenses over the next 50 years for
tens of thousands of badly wounded soldiers, other benefits, equipment
replacement, and interest on war debts.

Stiglitz and Bilmes calculated in 2008 that the combined cost of the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars would be between $5 and $7 trillion.  They
called these adventures the �credit card wars.� Using a somewhat
different methodology a few years ago, the Joint Economic Committee of
Congress, estimated the Iraq war ultimately will cost $3.5 trillion.
They didn�t include the Afghan war.  Assuming Obama is reelected, the
Bush-Obama wars � including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen (and
Somalia, where the U.S. is now engaged in drone strikes), plus the
wars in Obama�s final years � will certainly top $5 trillion in real
costs.

In this connection, we cannot forget that current Pentagon spending of
around $700 billion a year represents a huge increase since 2001, when
it totaled about $380 billion. (By comparison, during this same time
period, military spending by Iran � portrayed by Washington, Tel-Aviv
and Saudi Arabia as the greatest danger to peace in the Middle East �
dropped from $9 billion in 2001 to $7 billion in 2010.)  But Defense
Department expenses are only half the story. Double the Pentagon�s
$700 billion for a true estimate of the amount of money the U.S. spent
on war-related issues  last year. That�s $1.4 trillion a year for the
United States. How is this possible?

Instead of just discussing the Pentagon budget, it is essential to
also consider Washington�s various other �national security� budgets.
That of course includes the costs of Washington�s 16 different
intelligence services, the percentage of the annual national debt to
pay for past war expenses, Homeland Security, nuclear weapons,
additional annual spending requests for Iraq and Afghan wars, military
retiree pay and healthcare for vets, NASA, FBI (for its war-related
military work), etc. When it�s all included it comes to $1,398
trillion for fiscal 2010, according to the War Resisters League and
other sources. It�s not enough just to take note of the money
Washington spent on stalemated wars of imperial choice. It�s fruitful
to contemplate where our $5 trillion Bush-Obama war funding might have
been invested instead. It could have paid for a fairly swift
transition from fossil fuels to a solar-wind energy system for the
entire U.S. � a prospect that will now take many decades longer, if at
all, as the world gets warmer from greenhouse gases. And there
probably would have been enough left to overhaul America�s decaying
and outdated civil infrastructure, among other projects.

But while the big corporations, Wall Street and the wealthy are
thriving, global warming and infrastructure repair have been brushed
aside. States are cutting back on schools and healthcare. Counties and
towns are closing summer swimming pools and public facilities. Jobs
and growth are stagnant. The federal government is sharply cutting the
social service budget, and Medicare et al. are nearing the chopping
block.  During his Afghan speech, President Obama also declared that
�we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding.�
Finally, some �real change we can believe in� � right? Meanwhile, as
The White House and Congress slash the deficit, be assured despite a
bit of fixing here and there, the military and national security
budgets will remain essentially unchanged.
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