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Who’s winning,
Osama’s “we will bankrupt you” or the dwindling ‘coalition’ forces? In more
than fiscal terms, the neocon war hawk strategy is not a good ROI for the
forces of good. Shouldn’t another
strategy be deployed? Sorry about
the color highlights here, but the numbers need to stand out. Link below is
live and goes to a graphic on war costs. - KwC The Trillion-Dollar War By Linda Bilmes,
NYT, OpEd, Saturday, August 20, 2005 Cambridge, Mass.- The human cost of the more than 2,000
American military personnel killed and 14,500 wounded so far in Iraq and Afghanistan is all too apparent. But the
financial toll is still largely hidden from public view and, like the suffering
of those who have lost loved ones, will persist long after the fighting is
over. The cost goes well beyond the more than $250 billion already
spent
on military operations
and reconstruction. Basic
running costs of the current conflicts are $6 billion a month - a figure that reflects the Pentagon's unprecedented
reliance on expensive private contractors. Other factors keeping costs high include
inducements for recruits and for military personnel serving second and third
deployments, extra pay for reservists and members of the National Guard, as
well as more than $2 billion a year in additional foreign aid to Jordan, Pakistan,
Turkey and others to reward their cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill
for repairing and replacing military hardware is $20 billion a year, according to figures from the
Congressional Budget Office. But
the biggest long-term costs are disability and health payments for returning
troops, which will be
incurred even if hostilities were to stop tomorrow. The United States currently
pays more than $2 billion in disability claims per year for 159,000 veterans of
the 1991 gulf war, even though that conflict lasted only five weeks, with 148
dead and 467 wounded. Even
assuming that the 525,000 American troops who have so far served in Iraq and
Afghanistan will require treatment only on the same scale as their predecessors
from the gulf war, these payments are likely to run at $7 billion a year for
the next 45 years. All of this spending will need to be financed by adding to
the federal debt. Extra
interest payments will total $200 billion or more even if the borrowing is repaid
quickly. Conflict
in the Middle East has also played a part in doubling the price of oil from $30
a barrel just prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 to $60 a barrel
today. Each $5 increase in the price of oil reduces our national
income by about $17 billion a year. Even by this simple yardstick, if the American military
presence in the region lasts another five years, the total outlay for the war could
stretch to more than $1.3 trillion, or $11,300 for every household in the United
States. Linda Bilmes, an assistant secretary at
the Department of Commerce from 1999 to 2001, teaches budgeting and public
finance at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/20/opinion/20bilmes.html |
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