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