Real War Costs Divert Funds From Peace

In war, things are rarely what they seem.

Back in 2003, in the days leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon adamantly insisted that the war would be a relatively cheap one. Roughly $50 billion is all it would take to rid the world Saddam Hussein, it said.

We now know this turned out to be the first of many miscalculations. Approaching its fifth year, the war in Iraq has cost American taxpayers nearly $500 billion, according to the non-partisan U.S.-based research group National Priorities Project. That number is growing every day.

But it's still not even close to the true cost of the war. As the invasion's price tag balloons, economists and analysts are examining the entire financial burden of the Iraq campaign, including indirect expenses that Americans will be paying long after the troops come home.

What they've come up with is staggering. Calculations by Harvard's Linda Bilmes and Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz remain most prominent. They determined that once you factor in things like medical costs for injured troops, higher oil prices and replenishing the military, the war will cost America upwards of $2 trillion. That doesn't include any of the costs incurred by Iraq, or America's coalition partners.

"Would the American people have had a different attitude towards going to war had they known the total cost?" Bilmes and Staglitz wrote in their report. "We might have conducted the war in a manner different from the way we did."

It's hard to comprehend just how much money $2 trillion is. Even Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, would marvel at this amount. But once you begin to look at what that money could buy, the worldwide impact of fighting this largely unpopular war becomes clear.

Consider that, according to sources like Jeffrey Sachs, the Worldwatch Institute, and the UN, with that same money the world could:

• Eliminate extreme poverty around the world (cost $135 billion in the first year, rising to $195 billion by 2015)
• Achieve universal literacy (cost $5 billion a year)
• Immunize every child in the world against deadly diseases (cost $1.3 billion a year)
• Ensure developing countries have enough money to fight the AIDS epidemic (cost $15 billion per year)

In other words, for a cost of $156.3 billion this year alone -- less than a tenth of the total Iraq war budget -- we could lift entire countries out of poverty, teach every person in the world to read and write, significantly reduce child mortality, while making huge leaps in the battle against AIDS, saving millions of lives.

Then the remaining money could be put toward the $40-$60 billion annually the World Bank says is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, established by world leaders in 2000 to tackle everything from gender inequality to environmental sustainability.

The implications of this cannot be underestimated. It means that a better and more just world is far within reach, if we are willing to shift our priorities.

If America and other nations were to spend as much on peace as they do on war, that would help root out the poverty, hopelessness and anti-Western sentiment that often fuels terrorism -- exactly what the Iraq war was supposed to do.

So as candidates spend much of this year vying to be the next U.S. president, what better way to repair the country's image abroad, tarnished by years of war, than by becoming a leader in global development?

It may be too late to turn back the clock to the past and rethink going to war, but it's not too late for the U.S. and other developed countries to invest in the future.

Comments

[researcher]

americans in their hearts are war mongers and until americans come to that realization nothing will change in america.

politicans are only a reflection of the voters.

corporations are war mongers as it offers great profits.


"A nation that spends more year after year on military offense (and I mean offense) than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death". (Gunnels)

a religious nation is not a spiritual nation far from it.

[Cousins]

With a number so large, I built on the Stiglitz/Bilmes study mentioned and the Cost of War Calculator to let anyone see how much they personally contributed to that almost 1/2 a trillion dollars.

Find out how much the Iraq war will cost you at www.MyWarTax.org

[realitytrumpsbull]

But, but, how are you supposed to buy 400 heppyzillion worth of unobtainium-coated turd covers unless there's a war on? C'mon now, they don't GIVE those spinner rims away...gotta pay those day-trading fees somehow!

LOL

[LeftRight]

First, let's be honest here. The actual cost of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein WAS, in fact, close to $50 Billion. However, then they lied to us (again) and said that we needed to stay for "victory" which they have yet to be able to define!

[desmirl]

General Smedley Butler wrote, "War is a Racket" a long time ago. No one seems to remember. Of course a lot of wonderful things could be done with the money spent in Iraq - but to the Republican Party, spending money on war is a great investment (good returns on every dollar spent on your local defense contractor) while giving money to help the poor and the defenseless is just babying people that should be doing those things for themselves. The Republican Party--the party of Christian Morals--likes to hammer away at all those moral platitudes about sex, but charity or compassion -- NO WAY!

[ProudNeoCon]

you guys are welcome to donate your money to those causes...

[Sceptic42]

Sure. In the meantime, why don't you conservatives start ponying up for the war you wanted? Raise taxes to pay for the things you want, instead of charging them to the next administra­tion/gener­ation. You *say* that it's essential to our security, so why can't you act like it?

[JGatsby]

Thanks for the article on the cost of the Iraq war. This is something that needs a lot more attention. However, I wouldn't spend that money on making the world a better place. The idea that it is the job of the US to go around fixing the world is what got us in this mess in the first place. There are plenty of things RIGHT HERE that need funding. Social security, health care, education, etc.