Chart created by Costs of War
Tallying the economic and human costs of the U.S. response to the September 11 attacks, most especially the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, should have been a "statistical errand,"
according to Daniel Trotta. But when a cross-disciplines research team at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies took on the task, it found matters considerably more complicated.
One thing that became clear early on was that official reports and statements have vastly underestimated the costs, both those already incurred and those that will be in the future. Specific, direct spending so far, in inflation-adjusted 2011 dollars, has hit $1.3 trillion. Currently, about $10 billion a month is being added to that just for the Afghan and Iraq wars. But the team concluded the actual costs, when interest, Homeland Security, care for war veterans and social costs for veterans and their families are taken into account, the total rises as high as $3.7 trillion to $4.4 trillion. How's that for shock and awe? You can read the entire report written by Neta C. Crawford and Catherine Lutz here.
Add to the flow of money the flow of blood. The tens of thousands of dead and maimed soldiers. The hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed civilians. The millions of displaced refugees. The shattered families, the orphans, the men and women and children facing a lifetime of psychological trauma.
For a soberingly stark view of the impact of asymmetric warfare, contrast all that with the 19 lives and $500,000 or so it cost al Qaeda to carry out its attack Sept. 11. That attack took nearly 3000 lives and generated $100 billion in damages.
Even using the research team's conservative estimate of the cost of the wars at $2.7 trillion, the lost opportunity costs are gargantuan. That amount would restore all of America's crumbling infrastructure and leave half a trillion for other needs, such as education or building hundreds of community health clinics.
But, whether calculating the costs of war at $2.7 trillion or $4.4 trillion, the team left out numerous items:
• We have not counted the future payments for interest on the debt from 2011 forward.
• We are unable to calculate the unfunded costs that American[s] paid to care for their war wounded family member[s] (one in five of the cases of serious wounding has this effect)
• We did not calculate the future costs veterans medical care beyond age 67 including TRICARE for Life; nor did we include payments for disability beyond age 67 for veterans
• We did not calculate the costs that are paid by state and local governments for additional veterans benefits
• We have not included the [costs] of education benefits from new GI bill
• We did not include a total for the Statistical Value of Human Life for each troop and contractor who dies
• We were unable to include the costs of the CIA Predator and Reaper drone surveillance and strike program in Afghanistan. This "black" budget item, which included the costs of the drones, the operators, fuel, and weapons, is not known publicly. CIA spending for drone strikes and covert operations in Pakistan
• We have not counted the promised money, yet to be paid, for reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq
But the team did look at some other costs: the erosion of civil liberties; vast impacts on the environment, including the destruction of habitat and pollution; and the growth of corporate power and profiteering:
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with an increase in the Pentagon’s budget, have led to an increase in total military contracts to over $400 billion, their highest levels since World War II. Private contracting has grown to such a level that, in 2003, there were more private contract employees involved in the war in Iraq than uniformed military personnel. These contracts have been highly concentrated in the hands of just five contractors- Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics- accounting for over one-third of all Pentagon contracts.
Halliburton’s contract to put out oil fires in Iraq and rebuild the country’s oil infrastructure generated controversy on several fronts. One of the major ones concerns the question of why Halliburton was awarded a no-bid, open-ended 7-year contract for their work in Iraq even before the war began. Critics have contested the Pentagon’s reasoning that the need was too urgent and Halliburton was the only company capable of doing this work. Another issue is the “revolving door” between Halliburton and Bush administration Vice President, Dick Cheney. Halliburton served as an all-purpose logistics support service under the Army’s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP). This program was developed at the behest of Dick Cheney in the early 1990s and Halliburton was awarded the first contract in 1995, by which time Cheney had become Halliburton’s CEO. Further, Halliburton made huge profits through this program, much of them generated through gross overcharging and inflating invoices to cover “fraudulent war risk surcharges.”[i] Halliburton has also been accused of breaching its government contract and KBR has been said to have been systematically “veiling its business practices in Iraq,” [ii] thereby restricting the government’s oversight ability.
Was it worth it? Osama bin Laden is dead. He could have been killed or brought back in chains by a special operations unit years ago. Without a single American putting his boot prints on the streets of Fallujah. Without pallets full of billions in shrink-wrapped Benjamins scattered to who knows where. Without digging so many graves.