Thursday, September 8, 2011

The true cost of ten years of war


In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the USA went to war against terrorism and terrorists all around the globe. Afghanistan and Iraq were the two most visible and most costly campaigns, but there were many others. Now, ten years after the attack that sparked the 'war on terror', we're counting the cost . . . in more ways than one. Winslow T. Wheeler, head of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, offers this sobering reflection.

The war in Iraq and its costs are inseparable from the wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia and elsewhere. Indeed, when the Defense Department seeks appropriations for them, it does not distinguish the costs by location; nor does Congress in appropriations bills.

Moreover, the DOD costs are hardly the whole story: add costs in the State Department budget for aid to the governments (such as they are) of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.

Add also the costs to care for the U.S. veterans of these wars. That would include the care already extended and the care now obligated for the duration of these men's and women's lives.

Add to that the expanded costs of domestic security against terrorism.

Add also the interest we annually pay for the deficit spending that has financed the wars.

In short, if all the wars were to end today without a single penny appropriated for military operations, etc. for the upcoming fiscal year (2012), the federal costs already incurred would be from $3.2 to $3.9 trillion. If the wars were to run their course - as currently (and optimistically) estimated by the Congressional Budget Office - the costs (together with additional interest payments for the required deficit spending out to the year 2020) would come to an additional $1.45 trillion.

All that would make a total cost from $4.7 to $5.4 trillion - assuming everything in the future goes according to plan.

See a breakout of these costs in the summary table of Brown University's Costs of War study. Find that table at http://costsofwar.org/article/economic-cost-summary and find there links to the detailed analyses.

In sum, the costs to be incurred are very roughly five times the $1 trillion President Obama has articulated.

Breaking down some of these costs is also instructive.

. . .

There are, of course, other human and moral costs that the Costs of War Study addresses and that others have addressed as well. As the American media cranks it out for the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, it will eagerly prompt the emotions of the original event. Thinking and reacting that way is precisely how we ended up spending something in excess of $5 trillion and achieved a result that is the solid basis for only an argument - and very little more.


There's more at the link. I highly recommend reading Mr. Wheeler's entire article. It's well worth the effort.

That's the sad reality of America's battles over the past ten years. They haven't achieved a world free of terrorism . . . not even close. Instead, the War on Terror has come perilously close to bankrupting our nation, dividing those in uniform from the society in which they live (which mostly does not understand their sacrifice, and all too often doesn't appreciate it sufficiently), and undermining the civil liberties and constitutionally-recognized and -guaranteed rights that underpin our democracy. It's a sad situation.

Ten years after Japan attacked the USA on December 7th, 1941, this country had defeated not only Japan, but Germany and Italy too (developing and using the atomic bomb in the process); begun to rebuild a shattered Europe via the Marshall Plan; and was busy rebuilding Japan even as we defended democracy on the Korean Peninsula. Ten years after 9/11, our achievements are minuscule by comparison. That says a lot about what our society and our nation have become, doesn't it?


*Sigh*


Another perspective on the War on Terror is provided by Wired magazine's Danger Room, which reports:

The signature weapon of the 9/11 Era is lethal, easily concealable and maddeningly easy to construct. But the greatest danger from the improvised explosive device — what ensures its endurance far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan — lies in how cheap it is.

The improvised explosive device, or IED, isn’t a bomb. It’s a category of bombs, and within that category, insurgent MacGyvers construct makeshift bombs from whatever they have at hand. The Iraqi insurgency often relied on looted stockpiles of artillery shells or mines, juryrigged together and detonated from a cellphone. In Afghanistan, insurgents can’t similarly rely on abandoned weapons depots for their explosives, so they construct bombs using ammonium nitrate fertilizer, detonated by a fuse or using wooden plates that complete a hidden circuit when a soldier inadvertently steps on it. Insurgent allies in the security services of states like Iran or Pakistan add more sophisticated bomb ingredients or aid with logistics.

The common theme: all the ingredients for the bombs are inexpensive enough to remain in mass production, even when the U.S. attacks an insurgency’s revenue stream. And they’re vastly cheaper than the vehicles they destroy, the gear used to find them, and the troops they maim and kill.

Determining just how expensive they are is difficult, owing to all of the different components in the bombs. But according to the Pentagon’s bomb squad, the average cost of an IED is just a few hundred bucks, pocket change to a well-funded insurgency. Worse, over time, the average cost of the cheapo IEDs have dropped from $1,125 in 2006 to $265 in 2009. A killing machine, in other words, costs less than a 32-gig iPhone.

. . .

It’s also worth mentioning that the number of IEDs in Afghanistan has mushroomed: from 1,952 in 2006 to 5,616 in 2009. All told, since the Afghanistan war began, homemade bombs have killed 719 U.S. troops and wounded 7,448.

. . .

But homemade bombs have proliferated far, far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. JIEDDO’s 2010 recent annual report records an average of 260 IED attacks every month (.PDF) outside of the warzones in 2010. So far in 2011, there are upwards of 550 IED attacks beyond Iraq and Afghanistan every month. On Tuesday, Nigerian officials discovered a homemade bomb factory near Abuja; on Wednesday, a bomb stuffed into a briefcase killed 11 people and wounded 79 more in New Dehli.

And if the most common types of homemade bombs cost a couple hundred bucks to produce, the U.S.’ measures to stop them — robots, optics, flying sensors — are orders of magnitude more expensive. Explosive ordnance detection teams in Afghanistan use a small robot called a “Devil Pup” to locate IEDs. JIEDDO has paid $35 million for the 300 mini-robots — a little over $116,000 per ‘bot, which can buy about 440 victim-operated bombs.

. . .

... the improvised explosive device is a weapon of mass economic destruction, and its proliferation won’t stop until either its costs rise or the costs of counter-bomb methods drop substantially.


Again, more at the link.

Economics always trumps military hardware and/or skills in the long run. If you can't afford the war . . . you're going to lose. It's inevitable, inescapable and unavoidable.

Peter

7 comments:

  1. I have said it more than once, our political leadership has no " stones" We knew back in WWII who our enemies were, and we crushed them . Now we dance around the issue and refuse to state who our enemy really is because it might " offend" somebody so we dance around it and refuse to face it.

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  2. See this:

    http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003/09/three-conjectures-pew-poll-finds-40-of.html

    Substitute IED for Nuke and you get the same result.

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  3. MrG has it right. In WWII we not only knew who our enemies were, we didn't have any qualms about killing them. We not only didn't give a fig about "collateral" casualties, we purposely brought the war right to their civilian populace. (Note that more people died in the firebombing of Tokyo than were killed in either of the atomic bombings.)

    If we lose this war on terrorism, then it is my belief that we will start seeing these IED's right here in our own home towns. When that starts happening, all bets are off.

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  4. Of the generation presently coming up --

    1. Their first "real world" memories are likely 9/11.
    2. Their leading lights have been involved at the grunt level in the most longstanding hot war in half a century.
    3. They grew up in an age of self-directed information gathering instead of network approved party line news.
    4. They entered the regular workforce at a time of long-standing, systemic demographic and economic decline.



    Therefore - it's my belief that the America of 2035 or so - assuming we can keep her alive so long - will be the most hard-a$$ed it's been in a century, and will not be as restrained in responding to threats as we children of the 60's and 70's - and especially our Boomer parents - have been.


    Leastwise, that's my guess. I'm more interested in seeing America-writ-large shapes being good while it's relearning how to be strong.

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  5. We have handled the "war on terror" completely wrong from the beginning.
    The only way to win this war is to make it too expensive for the enemy to continue.
    First: we must declare these terrorists enemys, and mean it.
    Second: we must tell all the islamic nations who sponser terrorism, or allow the hate filled teachings in their schools and mosques to continue. that we will hold them responsible for policing their own people.
    Third: Stop spending money on feel good security measures ie: TSA etc.
    Fourth: Destroy (by Estimate) 10 times the damage caused by any future acts of terrorism against our people and cities.
    This includes places such as the Haj in Mecca where the faithful go on their pilgrimage. It also includes "colatteral damage"
    Fifth: Escalate the retaliation to new, higher levels if the acts of terror continue.
    Finally: DO NOT REBUILD ANY DAMAGE FOR ANY REASON
    Maybe if they have something to lose and have to pay to rebuild their world out of their own pockets they will give more thought to consequenses. We cannot afford to be reasonabile towards people who are not, and who will only mistake being reasonable for being weak.

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  6. I remember reading about a remote controlled toy truck with a cheap wireless video camera that some guys in Afghanistan had. They used it for scouting their patrol routes (vehicle patrol). As I remember it found about a dozen IED's before it broke, and cost about $500. One of the guys writing about it put it together and had it shipped out to him.

    That's they way it should be. Decentralize the process. Get the American ingenuity running and forget about the sanctified military supply chain types (Boeing, Raytheon, etc..) One of our military guys invented the plow that blew through the hedgerows inland of Normandy. Fitted to a tank, they made short work of that obstacle.

    Adapt Improvise Overcome! It's the American Way!!!!

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  7. As someone born in the 60's and raised during the cold war I remember the old Soviet Union and all of the disdain we in the free world viewed it with. As I was growing up we were fighting the Cold War. Now we have the War on Terror. And of course there is also the War on Drugs that began in the 70's. So for the entirety of my life the US has been at War, either literally or figuratively. Of course the only one that is over is the cold war but all three share a very common truth. All of these wars are economical in nature. The Soviet Union could not afford to match spending with the west and so they lost. But what about the war on Drugs and terror? the government states they are fighting and winning but are they? If you look at the reality of the situation it appears that we have already lost both wars. The government is being forced to spend more then it has and as a result is going bankrupt. Drugs offer too much reward for the risk they carry to people in 3rd countries with nothing to lose. There are even those who say that being in prison in America is better then living in poverty in South America. As for the terrorists; their aim was to destroy our way of life. Looking around at the changes of the last 10 years one could argue they have done just that. For those that can't remember the Soviet union allow me to tell you that the country was a dictatorship that never in it's entire history enjoyed the police power that the US currently enjoys. The TSA subjects people to searches on a routine basis that not even a totalitarian government did. Clearly with our freedoms gone we have lost the war on terror, we just refuse to accept it. And we will also lose the war on drugs, simply because we cannot outspend the drug cartels. Maybe it's time to rethink these wars, return our freedoms and try peace for a while. We certainly won't be any worse off then we are right now.

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