When President Obama announced a
troop reduction in Afghanistan on June 22, he said, “Over the last decade, we
have spent $1 trillion on war.”
As staggering as this figure is,
it underreports the full cost of the wars in the Middle East, since it only
reflects Pentagon spending. Even worse, it’s off by $300 billion—congressional
appropriations for the wars over the past 10 years currently total $1.3 trillion.
Now, a newly released study by
Brown University estimates the full cost of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and
Pakistan will be at least $3.7 trillion, and the final cost could reach a
mind-numbing $4.4 trillion.
The study, named “Costs of War” (costsofwar.org), attempts to provide a
comprehensive accounting, not only of military costs, but also future care for
veterans, losses borne by veterans and their families, interest on the war
debt, foreign military aid and increased spending on “homeland security.” It
also attempts to assess the human costs of the campaign to control the oil-rich
region.
To accomplish this task, project
directors Neta Crawford of Boston University and Catherine Lutz of Brown
University assembled a team of experts that included economists,
anthropologists, historians and humanitarian field workers.
According to Crawford, Politicians
throughout history have underestimated the costs of war. The report states that
the Bush administration for giving estimates of the costs of the 2003 war
against Iraq that were “shamelessly politically driven.”
In December 2002, Bush fired his
economic advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, for having told the Wall Street Journal that the war would cost up to $200 billion.
The following month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave a more acceptable
estimate, saying the war would cost “something under $50 billion.”
Elusive number
Specific war spending over the
past 10 years, expressed in 2011 dollars, comes to $1.3 trillion, the “Costs of
War” project found. But when collateral costs are factored in, that figure is
just the tip of the iceberg.
The wars have been financed almost
entirely by borrowing, adding $1.3 trillion to the national debt. To date, the
interest on this amount totals $185 billion.
In addition, the Pentagon has
received an extra $326 billion to $652 billion beyond the war appropriations.
Homeland security spending has totaled another $401 billion to date, and
war-related foreign aid adds another $74 billion.
Another hidden cost is health care
for U.S. war veterans. Even though veterans far too often receive substandard
care—or none at all—nearly half of the 1.25 million who have served in Iraq and
Afghanistan have made health or disability claims totaling $32.6 billion. The
report estimates government obligations to veterans will reach $600 billion to
$900 billion through 2050.
But those numbers leave out
hundreds of billions in social costs not borne by the U.S. government but by
veterans and their families: another $300 billion to $400 billion, bringing the
range of costs to date to approximately $3.2 trillion to $4 trillion.
That’s the total through the 2011
fiscal year. Add another $453 billion in projected war-related spending for
2012 to 2020 and the total balloons to as much as $4.4 trillion.
The human toll
The “Costs of War” attempts to
count some of the lives lost, estimating that as many as 250,000 soldiers and
civilians have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
However, the report only tallied
direct deaths—people killed by bombs or bullets. With 7.8 million refugees and
displaced people, and health and food systems in shambles, indirect deaths from
Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom are far higher.
Indirect deaths are so hard to
count that only a survey method can come close. Using this method, the medical
journal Lancet published a 2006 study that found there had been up to 940,000 Iraqi
deaths that would not have taken place in the absence of the U.S invasion and
occupation.
“When the fighting stops, the
indirect dying continues,” Crawford said.
The U.S. government doesn’t track
the number of people it kills, but even for the deaths it does count—members of
the U.S. military—the numbers may fall short of reality, said Lutz. When
veterans return home, they are disproportionately likely to die in suicides and
automobile accidents.
The U.S. government’s invasions of
Iraq and Afghanistan were sold as a “cakewalk,” which would be paid for by the
plunder of Iraq’s oil resources. Trillions of dollars and more than a million
deaths later, the wars continue. And now, a new war is being waged on Libya
while social programs are slashed at home.
This madness must come to an end,
but that will take a continued struggle. The anti-war movement must hold its
banner high: U.S. out of Africa and the Middle East! Bring the troops home now!
