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The Intercept reports:
The total U.S. budgetary cost of war since 2001 is $4.79 trillion, according to a report [PDF] [...] from Brown University's Watson Institute. That's the highest estimate yet.
Neta Crawford of Boston University, the author of the report, included interest on borrowing, future veterans needs, and the cost of homeland security in her calculations.
The amount of $4.79 trillion, "so large as to be almost incomprehensible", she writes, adds up like this:
- The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and other overseas operations already cost $1.7 trillion between 2001 and August 2016 with $103 billion more requested for 2017
- Homeland Security terrorism prevention costs from 2001 to 2016 were $548 billion.
- The estimated DOD base budget was $733 billion and veterans spending was $213 billion.
- Interest incurred on borrowing for wars was $453 billion.
- Estimated future costs for veterans' medical needs until the year 2053 is $1 trillion.
- And the amounts the DOD, State Department, and Homeland Security have requested for 2017 ($103 billion).
Crawford carried out a similar study[PDF] in June 2014 that estimated the cost of war at $4.4 trillion.
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Total Cost of USA's Wars Since 2001 Approaches $5 Trillion
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @11:37AM
Healthcare is useful.
Militarism, as practiced by USA, is just a stupid waste of money.
N.B. I'm not saying Obamacare would be my first choice for a healthcare system, but guns and bombs used for hegemonic aggression are completely off the list of useful spending.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 25 2016, @11:45AM
See, I figured you'd dig on it. I thought you were all for spending government money to create pointless jobs. Unnecessary military action is very Keynesian like that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:12PM
I want the jobs in THIS country, building up OUR infrastructure.
Blowing up shit over there and sending No-Bid Cheney's guys to build it back ain't any part of my plan.
pointless jobs
There was a time when USA was the envy of the world.
Our stuff was way better than their stuff.
It wasn't pointless to create all that great stuff.
...and, in the 1930s, the Capitalists sure as hell weren't going to do it on their own.
Looked around lately?
Over the decades, all that great stuff been allowed to decay.
(Thanks, Republicans; Neoliberal Blue Dog Dems too).
There's plenty of actual work to be done without going to any make-work.
Unnecessary military action is very Keynesian like that.
...to a twisted mind.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:41PM
Cheney's guys are Americans. The guys who build the bombs and bullets and guns and everything else are Americans. The guys who fight the wars are Americans. Are they just not the right kind of Americans to be getting pointless jobs for you?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:48PM
Militarism has a very low multiplier effect. [wikipedia.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 25 2016, @01:01PM
Linking the SJW bible now? I figured you had more intellectual honesty than that, even if I do think you're wrong on most everything.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:57PM
WTH did you wake up and take an extra ahole pill this morning? Or is the realization that you are about to see hill take the election messing with your head.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 26 2016, @01:40AM
If you can't take the heat...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 25 2016, @01:24PM
Cheney's guys spent more on air conditioning than the entire NASA budget.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 25 2016, @01:54PM
And? You think heating and air guys don't have bills to pay too or something? They contribute a hell of a lot more to civilization than NASA does.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 25 2016, @05:34PM
The figure wasn't for the heating and air guys, or their equipment, it was just the cost of fuel to keep the ACs running in-theater that exceeded NASA's annual budget within something like 6 months.
Point being, war is a big operation, even small parts of it have significant costs.
Main thing I think NASA has contributed to my lifetime is a solid demonstration of the ability to deliver ANY payload anywhere in the world via rocket, and the ensuing relative lack of war that followed from that demonstration. That and an incalculable advancement in technology, including digital computing.
But, hey, the modern grunt can't sweat like my grandfather did when he went to Iraq as a contractor in the 1950s.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 26 2016, @01:35AM
Oh the grunts sweated but you can't have an officer doing so. That just wouldn't be kosher.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 26 2016, @12:27AM
Fuck out of here with that bullshit. [nasa.gov]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 26 2016, @01:31AM
Tell me that when it's 90+ both temperature and humidity.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:53PM
Broken windows. We could do so much better than that.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 26 2016, @01:40AM
Kinda my point.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @02:19PM
> I thought you were all for spending government money to create pointless jobs.
And that is how you beg the question.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aclarke on Tuesday October 25 2016, @02:29PM
There should be an important distinction to a human between "creating pointless jobs" and "creating pointless jobs KILLING PEOPLE". I realize the article is about money spent and that's important to discuss, but fundamental to the discussion of war is the fact that much of war is about killing people. Anyone considering killing people because it's good for the economy has a seriously dysfunctional moral compass.
Even from a strictly economic perspective, spending $x to destroy infrastructure and society abroad and $y to attempt to rebuild it abroad is likely to be less economically and socially advantageous than spending $(x + y) on domestic infrastructure and social projects.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 25 2016, @03:06PM
I absolutely agree. I'm just arguing with gewg_ because I like making him refine his position. Now please explain this to Mrs. Clinton.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by RamiK on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:27PM
It's not so simple. There's a lot of talk about oil since it can theoretically be replaced by solar, wind & nuclear while the pollution and climate changes are quite hazardous to our health and environment. But very few people track iron, coal, rare earths and the dozens other industry raw materials that US military presence keeps available cheaply for the domestic industry. Materials, that btw, are required for those catalysts, panels, batteries and other oil substitute.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:08PM
None of those come from the middle east.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:34PM
None of those come from the middle east.
The article named:
The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and other overseas operations
Iraq & Syria are middle east oil. Iraq is fields and Syria is a pipeline.
Afghanistan & Pakistan aren't middle east but South \ Central Asia. Afghanistan is rare earth, oil pipeline and a few other deposits. Pakistan... Pakistan is big, has nukes and neighbors Afghanistan and India so they get caught up in just about everything else in that region.
Other overseas operation are Africa since the US haven't done anything major in east Asia for some time. The resources gain there are obvious when looking at how much money China is pouring into the region.
Worth nothing China been a fair global player compared to the other global powers. When they have territorial disputes they default to pouring money into building islands and buying factories and resources instead of using their military. Post Mao, they had some Tibet style indiscretions regarding a few minorities and civic issues... But those don't begin to compare with US racial riots and police violence.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:46PM
So out of all of that, Afghanistan has some rare earths. But we mostly get them from China. We have plenty domestically but there's a lead time since we killed our domestic industry and because the Chinese rare earths are slightly cheaper.
The U.S. produces more oil than the Middle East.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @05:08PM
No, Afghanistan also has a large share of the world's Heroin production, which is needed to keep the War on Drugs going.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Tuesday October 25 2016, @05:24PM
So out of all of that,
Nah. There's plenty of other stuff elsewhere like cheap iron and coal that doesn't necessitates deep mining and comes with cheap local labor.
Afghanistan has some rare earths. But we mostly get them from China.
And you're getting them cheap from China because you secure access to them. And the deposits in the states aren't as economical. Look up the Helium shortage and how US-China relationship work there. It's similar but less controversial since the alternative isn't war but production so the opinions are less biased by propaganda.
The U.S. produces more oil than the Middle East.
Fracking did that. There's a price AND a deadline for that little environmental blunder.
Instead of wasting both of our time on long resolved debates, look up game theory \ economics \ war studies dealing with these recent conflicts. Check out stuff that has citations from Thomas C. Schelling and Robert Aumann works as filter if you're not familiar with the terminology. You'll find there's a wide(absolute) consensus around the nature of these wars as resource wars. The debates are around who benefits, and who has the most to lose.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday October 29 2016, @05:17AM
And you're getting them cheap from China because you secure access to them.
Flushing trillions down the toilet in Afghanistan does nothing to secure our access to Chinese rare earths. Even if it did somehow, I have to wonder if using the more expensive domestic rare earths wouldn't still come out cheaper.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday October 29 2016, @06:22PM
Flushing trillions down the toilet in Afghanistan does nothing to secure our access to Chinese rare earths.
International exports are almost entirely speculative since the true production and cost figures are not available. China had helium export caps that were removed following the announcement on renewing US production. Access to Afghanistan's rare earths achieved the same result. Similarly, post-fracking, middle-eastern oil barrels dropped in price in advance of any actual increases in US gas production.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday October 29 2016, @07:50PM
It would have been orders of magnitude cheaper to re-start our own rare earth production capability and then keep it mostly idle. It would have killed a lot less people as well.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday October 30 2016, @12:17AM
When it comes to resources, "cheaper" is a concern for countries without nukes and self sufficient food production. More over, it's a nation-wide concern, something that's largely irrelevant to US politics which is governed by the few for the benefit of the few.
On the subject, there is only the one mine and the EPA had to be silenced by the Obama administration before the mine could have been reopened ( https://gizmodo.com/the-strange-second-life-of-americas-only-rare-earth-min-1702199894 [gizmodo.com] ).
It was a recent policy change that put peace, industry & paying back the national debt over environmental concerns.
It coincides with Flint switching from Lake Huron to the Flint River (April 2014) and a few other water aquifer pollutions \ gas leak affects on climate change reports getting pushed to the end of the term if you're wondering about the timeline.
Recently, we've even seen a new fission plant open in the states after almost half a century of moratorium in practice.
Well, I'll cut this short before digressing any further... But it will take so much intelligence (state department budget sits at $70million) just to start making sense of all the interests here. Overall, when you have so many interests coinciding from all over, a money sink of a war can perpetuate much like a recession can regardless of net cost in life and resources. Think, Hundred Years' War.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday October 30 2016, @01:43AM
I wouldn't say cheap is unimportant. The chickenhawks seem deeply concerned about it when talking about programs that don't blow people up.
Your gizmodo link isn't really good support for your statement since is says nothing about Obama or the EPA at all.
But in any event, that still leaves war in the middle east and surrounding areas unjustifiable.