We spend $32 million per hour on
wars started during the Bush administration.
This March marked the 15th
anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
In 2003, President George W. Bush
and his advisers based their case for war on the idea that Saddam
Hussein, then dictator of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction — weapons
that have never been found. Nevertheless, all these years later, Bush’s “Global
War on Terror” continues — in Iraq and in many other countries.
It’s a good time to reflect on what
this war — the longest in U.S. history — has cost Americans and others around
the world.
First, the economic costs: According
to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown
University’s Watson
Institute for International and Public Affairs, the war on terror
has cost Americans a staggering $5.6 trillion since 2001, when the
U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
$5.6 trillion. This figure includes not just the Pentagon’s war fund, but also future obligations such as social services for an ever-growing number of post-9/11 veterans.
It’s hard for most of us to even
begin to grasp such an enormous number.
It means Americans spend $32 million
per hour, according to a counter by
the National
Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Put another way: Since 2001, every
American taxpayer has spent almost $24,000 on the wars — equal to the
average down payment on a house, a new Honda Accord, or a year at a public
university.
As stupefying as those numbers are,
the budgetary costs pale in comparison with the human toll.
As of 2015, when the Costs of War
project made its latest tallies, up to 165,000 Iraqi civilians had
died as a direct consequence of U.S. war, plus around 8,000 U.S. soldiers and
military contractors in Iraq.
Those numbers have only continued to
rise. Up to 6,000 civilians were killed by U.S.-led strikes in Iraq and Syria
in 2017 –– more civilians than in any previous year, according to the watchdog
group AirWars.
In addition to those direct deaths,
at least four times as many people in Iraq have
died from the side effects of war, such as malnutrition, environmental degradation,
and deteriorated infrastructure.
Since the 2003 invasion, for
instance, Iraqi health care has plummeted — with hospitals and
clinics bombed, supplies of medicine and
electricity jeopardized, and thousands of physicians and healthcare workers
fleeing the country.
Meanwhile, the war continues to
spread, no longer limited to Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria, as many Americans
think. Indeed, the U.S. military is escalating a shadowy network of anti-terror
operations all across the world — in at least 76 nations, or 40 percent of countries on
the planet.
Last October, news about four Green Berets killed by
an Islamic State affiliate in the West African nation of Niger gave
Americans a glimpse of just how broad this
network is. And along with it comes all the devastating consequences of
militarism for the people of these countries.
We must ask: Are these astounding
costs worth it? Is the U.S. accomplishing anything close to its goal of
diminishing the global terrorist threat?
The answer is, resoundingly, no.
U.S. activity in Iraq and the Middle
East has only spurred greater political upheaval and unrest. The
U.S.-led coalition is seen not as a liberating force, but as an aggressor. This has fomented insurgent
recruitment, and there are now more terrorist groups in the Middle
East than ever before.
Until a broad swath of the American
public gets engaged to call for an end to the war on terror, these mushrooming
costs — economic, human, social, and political — will just continue to grow.
Stephanie Savell co-directs the
Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International
and Public Affairs. Distributed by OtherWords.org.
