The cost of war

On September 11, 2001, 2,977 innocent people were killed by teams of fanatical Al Qaeda terrorists who brought down the World Trade Towers, struck the Pentagon and crashed United flight 93 into the ground.

We responded with the “Global War on Terror” that led to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and military strikes in Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.

After ten years, what has the war cost? Last Wednesday, a new study from Brown University was released that offers some answers.

A new report by scholars with the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies provides the most recent and detailed analysis of the costs of fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan by US and allied forces against government troops and paramilitary Islamist groups in those countries.

The group’s “Costs of War” project, which involved more than 20 economists, anthropologists, lawyers, humanitarian personnel, and political scientists, provides new estimates of the total war cost as well as other direct and indirect human and economic costs of the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks.

Among the group’s main findings:

·         The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan will cost between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans. This figure does not include substantial probable future interest on war-related debt.

·         More than 31,000 people in uniform and military contractors have died, including the Iraqi and Afghan security forces and other allied military forces.

·         By a very conservative estimate, 137,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by all parties to these conflicts.

·         The wars have created more than 7.8 million refugees among Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis.

·         Pentagon bills account for half of the budgetary costs incurred and are a fraction of the full economic cost of the wars.

·         Because the war has been financed almost entirely by borrowing, $185 billion in interest has already been paid on war spending, and another $1 trillion could accrue in interest alone through 2020.

·         Federal obligations to care for past and future veterans of these wars will likely total between $600-$950 billion. This number is not included in most analyses of the costs of war and will not peak until mid-century.

The report also addresses the less tangible costs of the “War on Terror.” These include the difficult-to-calculate costs to the US economy caused by terror-related changes to business practices. Billions for new security measures. Billions in lost man-hours consumed by the requirements of new security measures. Billions in lost business in the travel and tourism industry. High energy prices. And missed opportunities – what we could have and should have done with all the money and personnel that we have spent on the war.

Another up-coming study estimates our extra homeland security costs at $690 billion and the lost-time costs at an additional $417 billion.

The Brown report also addresses other painful costs: the curtailment of civil liberties – e.g. the Patriot Act – and the stress of fear and anxiety on the public. Most Americans now accept as necessary practices such things as warrantless wire taps, arrest without warrants, imprisonment without trial, electronic strip searches and “enhanced interrogation,” known to the rest of the world as torture.

For all these costs, was it worth it? Was there a better way we could have done it? And the most important question of all: do we have to continue doing what we have been doing?

It’s the Fourth of July when we celebrate our Declaration of Independence and the hard-won freedoms enshrined in the Constitution. And a good time to reflect.

Author: Will Collette