Cost of US wars since 9/11? At least $3.7 trillion, study finds

Reuters via MSNBC ^ | 06/29/2011

[SeekAndFind]

When President Barack Obama cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America's wars.

Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released Wednesday.

The final bill will reach at least $3.7 trillion and could be as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project "Costs of War" by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies.

In the 10 years since U.S. troops went into Afghanistan to root out the al-Qaida leaders behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, spending on the conflicts totaled $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion.

Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs such as long-term obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020.

The estimates do not include at least $1 trillion more in interest payments coming due and many billions more in expenses that cannot be counted, according to the study.

[ClearCase_guy]

The Democrats like spending. They find it stimulative.

So, why are they complaining about the cost of the war?

[Drill Thrawl]

So that would be one million dollars for every innocent Iraqi “murdered” by the US “baby killers”. Or other BS studies on the war would have you believe.

[God luvs America]

funny you say that as i was just thinking- we spent 25% of that amount in a year on a failed stimulus program; what has benefited the country more; prosecution of the wars or the stimuloss??

[DoughtyOne]

I believe this is a gross over estimation of the costs. Somebody’s playing politics again.

[Cementjungle]

How many jobs did that create or save?

[paul51]

according to the research project "Costs of War" by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies

Don't know anything about them so can't judge the credibility of this report. I am wondering how they calculate the 'cost of war'. Is it the cost of our military, which we would have in any event or some measure of additional cost directly attributed to war?

[WOBBLY BOB]

Report: $6 billion missing in Iraq may have been stolen
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2734492/posts
War is the health of the State... or something like that.
The health of taxpayers, not so much.

[Dilbert San Diego]

It’s an over estimation in at least one major way.

About 80% of the defense budget is personnel costs. So, the payroll costs of the personnel overseas are counted as part of the cost of the wars. However, we would still have that cost whether they are deployed in theater or stationed stateside.

Also, much of the cost of weaponry, aircraft, ships, etc. would be incurred as part of our normal defense spending whether we were in an active conflict or not.

I don’t know the precise numbers, but you are right. The Democrats are playing politics with these numbers. And they are playing politics by saying that we should terminate war spending, bring the troops home, and spend the money on education and health care. What they fail to realize is that, in an era of trillion plus deficits, cutting spending in one area doesn’t allow you to reallocate funds somewhere else.

It’s not like there would suddenly be a trillion more dollars in the federal checking account if all of the active war spending ended tomorrow. It doesn’t work that way in real life, though it does work that way in the liberal utopian vision of things.

[Wuli]

As Rush has educated us all to understand, the rule, which he applied to the LameStreamMedia but which applies as well to the close conjunction of the LameStreamMedia, academia, what our college kids are indoctrinated with and what the average nightly broadcast news viewer is indoctrinated with -

what’s important is only the severity of the charge not the truth of the charge or the accuracy of the evidence -

and then the conjoined mantra of the media and academia takes over and the public perception is ingrained with propaganda.

[Brilliant]

It includes $1 trillion in interest? Why not continue the math and make it ten trillion?

But its still small change compared to the costs of Obamas spending.

[RobinOfKingston]

Cost to the other side: nearly nothing.

Funded out of donation jars left on the counters of islamic quick stops all across the free world.

[Brilliant]

I don’t know what the Dems can make of this. They voted for the war as well and in fact complained that Bush was trying to do it on the cheap.

[Cementjungle]

That $6 billion wasn’t ours in the first place.

[Domalais]

About 80% of the defense budget is personnel costs. So, the payroll costs of the personnel overseas are counted as part of the cost of the wars. However, we would still have that cost whether they are deployed in theater or stationed stateside.

Simply not true. Lots of additional personnel costs are incurred because of the war: extra pays for deployed personnel, additional pays for stop loss, retention bonuses, accession bonuses, etc. And that's not even including the costs of extra personnel who would not be needed otherwise.

Also part of the personnel cost is the cost of civilians paid to replace service members. A large percentage of jobs on military installations which had previously been done by military personnel are now done by civilians. This was done to artificially inflate the size of the military and also so that entire units could be deployed without cutting essential services on the installation. Good examples of this are gate guard duties (previously done by MPs/now done by rent-a-cops), human resources (previously done by administrative personnel/now done by DOD civilians), finance (same), and even mundane tasks like mail service and landscaping. All of these were performed by the military itself as the service member's main duty or as an additional duty. Now you have government employees - almost all of whom are retired military - performing those jobs for 3 to 4 times the pay that service member would have been paid for the same task. And those civilians are nearly impossible to fire.

Then you have the death gratuity and life insurance payouts for the deceased. 5,921 casualties as of March. $500,000 each. That's 3 billion dollars right there just in upfront pays, not including medical costs, and the continuing pay (55 percent of salary) to the deceased's families.

What about the pensions for all the military members involved in OIF and OEF? What about all the extra pay, VA benefits, etc, that those service members will receive as a result of their overseas service and the physical and mental trauma they have endured?

Also, much of the cost of weaponry, aircraft, ships, etc. would be incurred as part of our normal defense spending whether we were in an active conflict or not.

Likewise not true. We have spent enormous sums of money on everything from vehicles to camouflage which are purpose built for the Middle East and the type of war we are currently fighting. As proof, just look at many of the vehicles the military bought for use in Iraq: they're too big, not maneuverable enough, and not offroad-capable enough for use in Afghanistan. So now we're creating a second set of MRAP designs and various other equipment just for Afghanistan, which after the war is over will be just as useless for whatever war follows these.


$4 trillion? Probably a low ball estimate of the total cost, let alone the cost over the next 50 years considering the obligations the government has to wounded service members and survivors of the deceased.

[DoughtyOne]

Those are all good points. You touched a number of bases in a good way there.

I’d like to add, that the comments about pouring more money into education from the “savings” (as if), are ridiculous for another reason. We’re already second to none on the per capita spending on education. We don’t need to spend more.

What we need to do there, is quit shoving the Leftist agenda down our kid’s throats and get back to real education, and zero indoctrination.

There are other similar issues.

[DoughtyOne]

Bull s—t.

I’ll agree that some of what you say is true, but there is a massive over-count related to what wars cost us.

$3.7 trillion is a vast over-count.

Dilbert was right.

[dragnet2]

We go into Iraq and within a few years, thousands dead, tens of hundreds of billions in tax dollars later, our economy is circling the drain, millions out of jobs, borders an international embarrassment, and national security disaster, the dollar worthless, and gas has freaking doubled..

WTF did we win?

[DoughtyOne]

From a report by: The Congressional Research Service

Entitled:

The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other
Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11

Amy Belasco
Specialist in U.S. Defense Policy and Budget
March 29, 2011

STATES:

Although DOD’s FY2012 request of $118 billion fell in proportion to the 25% fall in troop levels from 212,000 in FY2011 to 158,000 in FY2012, this funding could be more than necessary in light of recent experience and potential troop decreases. If the overall war FY2012 request of $132 billion is enacted, war funding since the 9/11 attacks would reach $1.415 trillion.

LINK  Found at the bottom of page two, the next to the last paragraph.


Now I'm not here to tell you that this is the exact cost of the war to this point, and the cost may in fact be somewhat more than this, but I am here to tell you that it isn't $3.7 trillion or more to date.

I've seen other credible reports stating our costs are not anywhere near as high as this current report ($3.7 trillion estimate) says they are.  Someone is playing games here.

[Domalais]

This number is specifically in relation to additional, off-budget costs directly related to the war and paid to the Department of Defense. It doesn’t include the costs that are actually part of the budget, the funds headed to non-DOD agencies involved in the war on terror, or money spent on the ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq - with the exception of CERP funds.