How much will our wars cost?

A new report out of Brown University estimates that the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq--together with the counterinsurgency efforts in Pakistan--will, all told, cost $4 trillion and leave 225,000 dead, both civilians and soldiers.

The Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, has assessed the federal price tag for the wars at $1.8 trillion through 2021. The report says that is a gross underestimate, predicting that the government has already paid $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion.

Perhaps the most sobering conclusion of the researchers is that it's unclear whether the human and economic costs are worth it. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are now dead, the Taliban is marginalized, and the dangerous terrorist network al-Qaeda has been all but destroyed. But Iraq and Afghanistan are far from being stable democracies. Meanwhile, the half a percentage point a year in GDP growth the war has fueled has been offset by the enormous increase in the national deficit, the report says.

"We decided we needed to do this kind of rigorous assessment of what it cost to make those choices to go to war," study co-director Catherine Lutz told Reuters. "Politicians, we assumed, were not going to do that kind of assessment."

The researchers recommend that the U.S. government be more transparent in disclosing the costs of its wars to taxpayers, by including the costs of future health care for veterans, the cost of paying interest on debt taken out to fund the wars, and estimating how much state and local governments take on in war costs. You can see their recommendations here.

The cost of losing the WOT is losing the country all the wealth most of the population...

The War on Terror is a fraud. If it wasn't a fraud Bush and the GOP controlled CONgress would have sealed our borders and stopped legal immigration of Muslims after 9/11. Instead they did the exact opposite and kept the flood gates wide open while creating the Department of Homeland Security go after American toddlers and grandmothers. The so-called War on Terror is a Hollywood style propaganda psyop to trick rubus Americanus into supporting Globalism abroad and tyranny at home.

By the way, the real reason our troops are fighting and dying in Afghanistan is protect the 300,000 Chinese miners that are there exploiting the treasure trove of natural resources in that country. Natural resources that are sent back to Red China to manufacture products that make the PLA rich and put the American middle-class out of work.

For many of those people, it isn’t logical, it is emotional.

Me?

I approve that we have been able to show many of those people who slaughtered 3,000 of our fellow Americans in a matter ow hours and want us all dead, that if push comes to shove, we won’t always roll over and wring our hands, just like many (even on FR) would rather we do, emulating Jimmy Carter during the Iranian Hostage Crisis. (note the ‘always’ verbiage. That is reality.) A lot of dumb assholes have forgotten 9-11. I haven’t, and never will.

If I had my way, any time one of those idiots pops up and shouts “Death to America”, I would be fine spending half a million at a pop to drop a bomb on his head. Even if people like that didn’t pull the trigger or hijack the planes, they caused it and were willing participants in the bloodshed. If they want to engage in bloodshed, I say we engage them on the most unfair, tilted battlefield in our favor that all of our national wealth can muster. Squash people like that so that nobody will ever even know what the grease spot is, and do it so unfairly that it makes them stagger.

Simply because the life of one American serviceman is worth the life of a million “Death to America” chanters.

Secondarily, because we are wholly dependent on foreign oil, we have a vested interest in keeping that flow going because it is the lifeblood of our prosperity and our basic way of life. Many people, incredibly, simply do not grasp that fact. They would grasp it pretty quick if oil from the Middle East was shut down. All those niceties of life, gasoline on demand, fresh potable water from any sink with a faucet, the large screen television, wealth enough to take vacation, pay for the mortgage and put food on the table, would all go away quite quickly. My preference is that we develop our own sources of energy and exploit them. But liberals are hell bent on stopping us, stupidly thinking that if they succeed as they wish in thwarting any energy growth (or actually deliberately destroying our energy industry) their lives will somehow not change dramatically for the worse. Sadly, I fear they will have to learn the hard way, but all the rest of us are going to suffer too as they learn their lesson. Liberals up here in New England will wonder in amazement how events could have ever conspired to cause them to tear down the fences around their house in the middle of the bitter winter to burn for warmth.

They will probably still blame it all on Big Oil.

Lastly, that figure of 250,000 dead includes many patriotic Americans who gave their lives, but also includes a large number of islamofascist scumbags who were walking around with RPG’s, burying things in the middle of the road, or people providing support and aid to them. If not for the loss of our countrymen, this would be a wholly positive thing.

And by the way...I thought the number was 100,000 people. They keep throwing that out. What, did this liberal POS decide to double down on the number?

They estimate with a $4,000,000,000 (15-17%) margin of error what it's already cost and I'm supposed to take you seriously about future costs?

Despite that huge estimation gap in what should be knowable because it's already happened, they still claim to estimate what it'll all cost, somehow, because their magic 8 balls tells them when these wars will be over.

Suppose $2.3-2.7 trillion has been spent over 10 years. How does that compare with the deficits of the last 2 years? What's that? We've overspent more in two years than all these wars have cost, by your ludicrous estimates, across a 10 year span?

State and local governments take on the war costs? Seriously?

Let's toss in what it costs to pay the Commanders in Chief too because they wouldn't get paid otherwise, right? Obviously this is an agenda driven study to "prove" the wars have spent us into ruin when facts are not on their side.

The wars have added a half percent to GDP growth? Heaven help us because we'd be just barely above 1% without it if their claim is true!

I didn't bother clicking through to see the "recommendations" because the excerpted press account is already a sloppy, bogus summary.

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