On the cost of war, through 2017, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq may total $1.2 to $2.7 trillion. Just calling it $1.6 trillion to divide evenly for 16 years of war since 2001, call it $100 billion per year over the long run, just for argument's sake. That is a chunk of change, no doubt; but that is out of an economy currently running at $13 trillion per year. So even assuming our current GDP reflects the average over that span, we're talking of a burden on $208 trillion in GDP. And what's our annual federal budget to pay for $100 billion per year in federal spending on the war? About $3 trillion.
As long as what we are fighting for is a good thing, the costs are trivial. And if what we are fighting for isn't worth the cost, it wouldn't be worth a tenth of the annual cost, really. Or anything at all. So the cost itself is irrelevant for judging right and wrong.
Because of that basic fact, the exercise is really quite farcical and only an effort by opponents of the war to undermine the war and not a simple accounting for the war:
These numbers don't include the war's cost to the rest of the world. In Iraq itself, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion — with its devastating air bombardments — and the looting and arson that followed, severely damaged electricity and other utilities, the oil industry, countless factories, hospitals, schools and other underpinnings of an economy.
No one has tried to calculate the economic damage done to Iraq, said spokesman Niels Buenemann of the International Monetary Fund, which closely tracks national economies. But millions of Iraqis have been left without jobs, and hundreds of thousands of professionals, managers and other middle-class citizens have fled the country.
In their book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," Stiglitz, of Columbia University, and Bilmes, of Harvard, report the two wars will have cost the U.S. budget $845 billion in 2007 dollars by next Sept. 30, end of fiscal year 2008, assuming Congress fully funds Bush administration requests.
That counts not just military operations, but embassy costs, reconstruction and other war-related expenses.
That total far surpasses the $670 billion in 2007 dollars the Congressional Research Service says was the U.S. price tag for the 12-year Vietnam War.
Although American military and Iraqi civilian casualties have declined in recent months, the rate of spending has shot up. A fully funded 2008 war budget will be 155 percent higher than 2004's, the CBO reports.
Indeed, the cost could be higher according to Siglitz and Blimes:
Estimating all economic and social costs might push the U.S. war bill up toward $5 trillion by 2017, they say.
I already derided the Joint Economic Committee's efforts on this data back in November. But let's have another go, shall we?
Note that the comparison to Vietnam is apples and oranges. The Vietnam costs are direct war costs during the war. For Iraq, the authors feel free to count every secondary and tertiary cost conceivable as stemming from the Iraq War (but let's gloss over the cost of the "good" (for now) Afghanistan War). What if we counted the cost of World War II that way? Our entire VA system is essentially a result of that war to care for all the veterans of World War II and the dependents of those killed. And since the war led to the Soviet Union entering the heart of Europe where they had to be contained during the long Cold War, can we count those decades as a cost of World War II?
And as I've said before, would anybody count interest on debt when counting the cost of any social program? Why in a budget of $3 trillion and a deficit far exceeding the annual war cost, is the responsibility for the deficit assigned to military spending on Iraq? Isn't national defense the very first responsibility of our government? Shouldn't the hundreds of billions we spend on defense be at the top of the list of spending and counted as spending from actual tax revenue?
Second, saying our costs in Iraq are caused by the invasion--"devastating air bombardments — and the looting and arson that followed, severely damaged electricity and other utilities, the oil industry, countless factories, hospitals, schools and other underpinnings of an economy"--is an outright lie, or staggering misconception by the authors at best.
We did not bomb Iraq's civilian infrastructure during the war. We deliberately avoided hitting the infrastructure precisely to avoid the price of rebuilding it. We anticipated taking Baghdad and so had no reason to wreck what we'd soon be responsible for making work. The damage was initially caused mostly by years of Saddam-era neglect which meant we had to build the infrastructure and not rebuild it. The assertion that we bombed schools and hospitals is a disgusting smear on our war effort, and one done effortlessly as a matter of assumption for their arguments.
Further, responsibility for the damage since the invasion, the loss of jobs, and refugees properly lies with the Iranian-backed Sadrist thugs and al Qaeda terrorists who have bombed and murdered for the last several years. We have done our best to defend Iraqis from these invaders.
Finally, unless you are simply using any cudgel to bash the war effort and compel an American defeat, stop complaining about the cost of the war while simultaneously complaining about either our casualties or Iraqi casualties. We spend money to avoid spending blood--ours or the enemies. Precision and training cost money. Armor costs money. All the gee whiz things we use to target enemies, protect our troops, and spare innocents potentially in the crossfire cost money.
Once, the Left said we'd face a Stalingrad-on-the-Tigris at Baghdad and couldn't defeat Saddam. They fell silent when we blitzed through Saddam's military like rancid tofu through a human shield.
Once the Baathists started to resist and were joined by Sadrists and jihadis sent and supported by Syria and Iran, the Left said the insurgents and terrorists would naturally win the war. The surge was doomed, they said, when we reacted to the post-Samarra violence with a change of strategy. Yet we've defeated the Baathists, Sunni nationalists, Sunni jihadis, and Iran-backed Sadrists.
So after we've knocked down our many enemies in Iraq fighting to derail a new democracy, with the surge being only the latest success, the Left has been stuck with another losing argument. So they've shifted to another line against the war--even victory isn't worth the price, so we must get out now.
Don't speak to me of the "high" costs of the war. Our Left was against the Iraq War regardless of the cost from the very start. And they aren't so much "predicting" our defeat as working actively to achieve our defeat.
Win the war. Count the costs later. No lost war is ever worth the cost, regardless of the price paid in lives and treasure.
UPDATE: A Pentagon press briefing provides actual numbers for actual appropriations:
I think the Pentagon has been extraordinarily transparent in what we know the cost of the war to be.
Since September 11th, 2001, the Department of Defense has obligated $527 billion to the global war on terror. The breakdown: For Operation Iraqi Freedom, it's 406.2 billion; for Operation Enduring Freedom, that's 92.9 billion and for Operation Noble Eagle, which of course is in defense of the homeland, it's another 27.8 billion.
So add that all up, and we come to $527 billion from September 11th, 2001, and this takes us through December 2007. So we don't have the first couple months of this new year.
We don't factor the costs of any other federal spending the way these two authors toted up the numbers for the war. Let's stick to real costs. Honestly, the numbers are big enough. Why do they even need to inflate the costs so ridiculously to make their point? It's almost as if they don't think the amount actually spent is too much after all.
Maybe they need to make sure national defense spending far exceeds whatever national health care plan they support would cost. Why else would they use their methodology?
UPDATE: I may have been too hasty in ascribing the article's statements about our responsibility for damage to civilian infrastructure to the book's authors. Looking at the article again, it may be the AP story's author asserting that rather than reporting on the book.
