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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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You humans are all alike.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:04PM
How many of us understand how and why the uS won it's independence from England?
Empires are expensive, in many different ways. It costs money, time, material, and lives to put down rebellions, to keep the colonials in line, to keep the natives subdued.
The US doesn't exactly have an empire, but what we have isn't so very different. We're paying the same bills, for basically the same things that the British empire couldn't afford.
And, funny enough, those costs are only a small part of the US' debt. We've squandered our great grandchildren's wealth. On and on we go, spending money foolishly, like there is no tomorrow. All for the sake of corporate interests, and corporate profits.
We should just dissolve the twenty or fifty largest corporations, those with the most lobbying influence, and start all over. Get a couple banks, a couple aircraft manufacturers, a military vehicle manufacturer, and several credit companies. Just seize their assets, and tell them they are personna non grata.
That would put all the rest of the corporations on notice that they can go down too.
Empire. England didn't build it's empire for the sake of the crown. The empire was built on business interests - the Hudson Bay company, various Indian interests, and so much more. Rich bastards lobbying the crown for aid in building a business empire, so that they could pay taxes to the crown, which they cheated on later.
History does repeat itself, doesn't it?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:28PM
The USA obtained its independence, in part, due to the aid of France.
Quoting from the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War [wikipedia.org]
Because the French involvement in the war was distant and naval in nature, over a billion livres tournois were spent by the French government to support the war effort. That sum was double the normal annual income of the French government, making the finances of the French state in disastrous shape. The heavy cost of servicing the debt, given the highly inefficient financial system, caused political instability in France. That instability was one of the immediate causes of the French Revolution of 1789.
In all the French spent 1.3 billion livres to support the Americans directly, in addition to the money it spent fighting Britain on land and sea outside the U.S.[15]
France's status as a great modern power was affirmed by the war, but it was detrimental to the country's finances. Even though France's European territories were not affected, victory in a war against Great Britain with battles like the decisive siege of Yorktown in 1781 had a large financial cost which severely degraded fragile finances and increased the national debt.[16] France gained little except that it weakened its main strategic enemy and gained a new, fast-growing ally that could become a welcome trading partner. However, the trade never materialized, and in 1793 the United States proclaimed its neutrality in the war between Great Britain and the French Republic.
One can draw parallels between France as a great power taking on disastrous debt servicing foreign wars, and the current behaviour of the USA.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @04:28AM
That war tumbled on and on for a long time too. The americans were getting beat in 1812. But the English had to withdraw and basically settled with what is now canada. Why did they withdraw? Because the french were back at it and they had to concentrate on Napoleon. Napoleon had to find a quick infusion of cash. Which he got from the Americans and the Louisiana purchase.
It wasn't until basically WWI that everyone started to get along to fight the germans. Even the civil war England and France took sides.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:39PM
It costs money, time, material, and lives to put down rebellions, to keep the colonials in line, to keep the natives subdued.
If you are restricted to doing it in a politically safe manner, I'm guessing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 25 2016, @01:12PM
You sound like a Bernie Bro. So, you've gone full-commie?
Nah, just yanking your chain. I agree with you completely. It will never happen in America 1.0, though. That version of the republic is totally compromised and cannot be fixed. We gotta scrap it and start over. The system, that is. The people in America who are not part of the elite are as good and capable as they've always been, despite the nonsense Left vs. Right rhetoric, the Black Lives Matter vs. Others rhetoric, the old vs. young rhetoric. But the longer they wait to uproot the system, the less that will be true: the fish rots from the head first, but eventually the rot reaches the rest of the fish also.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Tuesday October 25 2016, @01:46PM
We should just dissolve the twenty or fifty largest corporations, those with the most lobbying influence, and start all over. Get a couple banks, a couple aircraft manufacturers, a military vehicle manufacturer, and several credit companies. Just seize their assets, and tell them they are personna non grata.
A powerful state which can just take like that is precisely the sort of state that gets into wars. Why do people continue to have this fantasy that a few corporations are running things when all the power is in the government? The corporations get better deals with the government than you because they have more to offer.
Here, you speak of 50 US businesses while ignoring that there is only one federal government with a captive revenue stream of over three trillion dollars.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday October 25 2016, @07:43PM
You're actually starting to sound reasonable in your old age, Runaway :) Quick, say something false and ignorant and jingoistic, before J-Mo and The Shitey Uzzard have you up on charges of insufficient patriotism!
...seriously, though, the US is going down the exact same path the USSR did 30-odd years ago and for the exact same reason. Putin must be laughing himself hoarse every night into his vodka ration. History might not repeat, precisely, but it sure as hell rhymes with itself. We got bogged down in Afghanistan, we're corrupt and decadent internally, we rely on effectively slave labor, we don't make much of anything, we're entangled in foreign alliances...it's the same story all over again. Rome, the Ottomans, the USSR...and now us.
What has me worried is that collapses tend to happen much faster than most peoples' imagination can accomodate. And the US has a lot of really, really bad karma concerning foreign policy, and a lot of powerful enemies. There are about a zillion ways things could go to hell in the blink of an eye.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...