Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
America's Costly War Machine
Fighting the war on terror compromises the economy now and threatens it in the future.
Ten years into the war on terror, the U.S. has largely succeeded in its attempts to destabilize Al Qaeda and eliminate its leaders. But the cost has been enormous, and our decisions about how to finance it have profoundly damaged the U.S. economy.
Wounded soldiers attend the opening of the Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, Texas on January 29, 2007. To date, the United States has spent more than $2.5 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Ben Sklar / Getty Images)
Many of these costs were unnecessary. We chose to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan with a small, all-volunteer force, and we supplemented the military presence with a heavy reliance on civilian contractors. These decisions not only placed enormous strain on the troops but dramatically pushed up costs. Recent congressional investigations have shown that roughly 1 of every 4 dollars spent on wartime contracting was wasted or misspent.
To date, the United States has spent more than $2.5 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon spending spree that accompanied it and a battery of new homeland security measures instituted after Sept. 11.
How have we paid for this? Entirely through borrowing. Spending on the wars and on added security at home has accounted for more than one-quarter of the total increase in U.S. government debt since 2001. And not only did we fail to pay as we went for the wars, the George W. Bush administration also successfully pushed to cut taxes in 2001 and again in 2003, which added further to the debt. This toxic combination of lower revenues and higher spending has brought the country to its current political stalemate.
There is only one other time in U.S. history that a war was financed entirely through borrowing, without raising taxes: when the Colonies borrowed from France during the Revolutionary War.
Even if we were to leave Afghanistan and Iraq tomorrow, our war debt would continue to rise for decades. Future bills will include such things as caring for military veterans, replacing military equipment, rebuilding the armed forces and paying interest on all the money we have borrowed. And these costs won't be insignificant.
History has shown that the cost of caring for military veterans peaks decades after a conflict. Already, half of the returning troops have been treated in Veterans Administration medical centers, and more than 600,000 have qualified to receive disability compensation. At this point, the bill for future medical and disability benefits is estimated at $600 billion to $900 billion, but the number will almost surely grow as hundreds of thousands of troops still deployed abroad return home.
And it isn't just in some theoretical future that the wars will affect the nation's economy: They already have. The conditions that precipitated the financial crisis in 2008 were shaped in part by the war on terror. The invasion of Iraq and the resulting instability in the Persian Gulf were among the factors that pushed oil prices up from about $30 a barrel in 2003 to historic highs five years later, peaking at $140 a barrel in current dollars in 2008. Higher oil prices threatened to depress U.S. economic activity, prompting the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and loosen regulations. These policies were major contributors to the housing bubble and the financial collapse that followed.
Now, the war's huge deficits are shaping the economic debate, and they could keep Congress from enacting another round of needed stimulus spending to help the country climb out of its economic malaise. Many of these war debts are likely to continue to compromise America's investments in its future for decades.
For years, the public failed to adequately question how it was possible that we could spend and borrow so freely, with so few consequences. But now the painful legacy of these decisions has become clear. Throughout the past decade, Congress routinely approved huge "emergency" appropriations to pay for the wars. This process preempted the usual scrutiny and debate that accompanies large spending bills. In part, this is because the U.S. lacks the basic accounting tools necessary for informed debate. Our future debts from the war are not listed anywhere in the federal government's budget. We don't even know for certain where the money has been spent. The Pentagon hasn't produced a clean financial audit in the 20 years since government auditing began, nor has it developed an accounting framework that would allow an assessment of the future costs of current decisions. This has almost certainly increased the overall cost of the war.
Our response to Sept. 11 has weakened both the current economy and our future economic prospects. And that legacy of economic weakness — combined with the erosion of the credibility of our military power and of our "soft power" — has undermined, rather than strengthened, our national security.
Nearly 10 years into the Afghanistan war, the violence in that country shows little sign of abating. August was the deadliest month of the war yet for U.S. troops, and there were also multiple attacks on Afghan security forces, government officials and civilians. The surge in violence comes as NATO is drawing down and handing over security control to national forces. But tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel are scheduled to remain in Afghanistan through the end of 2014.
The costs of fighting the war on terror have already been far higher than they needed to be. The U.S. should not take on even greater war debt without understanding the true costs of continuing down that path.
17 Comments so far
Show AllWe all know that we are spending too much on our military budget, that we need to bring our troops home from ill concieved wars, close un-needed and obsolete bases around the world and stop policing intervention's that should be done by the country's involved no matter the pleas for help.
We all know that, but this Congress and this President will make no change, therfore we need to change them in 2012 with clear directives. And the closest viable Thrid Party thrust is not in our interest. Nor is the silly contention that somehow by ignoring our political avenues we can impact politics. Or the adloscent cry that we should "go to the streets," or we live in an opressed country.
Time for grown up's to join in.
BEAU: Hello, Thomas More. New incarnation? An elementary school teacher, hired as private tutor, would correct your always evident misuse of the apostrophe, and then your next attempt at a devious screen name change might win you some cred.
- Nearly 10 years into the Afghanistan war -
- fighting the war on terror -
Did the authors alternate paragraphs, there at the end?
I suggest yet again that we need to agree upon a single meme, a single term for this insanity. If we can't even agree on this, then we can never unite enough to make progress (the last 10 years, for example).
Let's review:
US troops remain in Iraq as an occupation force, after the meaningless invasion (our war goals were nonsense).
There is no 'Afghanistan war'. Using this term is counter-productive and people should cease and desist.
Public Law 107-40 is still in effect. The President has the power to wage war where someone sees/imagines al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or al-Qaeda affiliates. In fact, now the President involves the US military where he pleases (Libya). We should do something about that much power, we really should.
(It's been 10 years of insanity so far. I continue to suggest that ignoring the law that started it all is the wrong way to improve matters.)
Calling things by different names violates the strategic rule of a single goal, a single target.
I suggest that we don't use a name that was invented by Bush lackeys (GWOT or WOT).
Unless someone has something we like better, I suggest that we all call it DAFT, the Defense against Future Terror, because it can never be won and the whole idea is daft.
I suggest that we win the linguistic battle and use our term, instead of forever having to protest against things defined by others.
This is generally a worthwhile critique of the obscenely bloated mega-boondoggle originally branded and marketed as "The Global War on Terror".
I believe that Team Obama retired that name after its original pizzazz wore off, and it became appropriately perceived as grandiose and self-caricaturing. Though the title's been changed, the song remains the same.
It's unfortunate, though, that the article begins with "Ten years into the war on terror, the U.S. has largely succeeded in its attempts to destabilize Al Qaeda and eliminate its leaders."
It's only a passing reference to set up an economic analysis. But it exhibits a shallow, facile, and credulous acceptance of an orthodox manufactured narrative that's dubious at best-- it takes The Phantom Menace at face value.
That is, it takes for granted that there really exists a well-defined, independent, discrete international terrorist organization called "Al Qaeda", and implies that "we" ("the U.S.") have straightforwardly been rigorously and successfully pursuing Them for the purpose of terminating them with extreme prejudice.
The article would be better without such offhand fatuity, which reduces a complex reality to the equivalent of, say, asserting that Elliott Ness and the Untouchables have largely succeeded in its attempts to destabilize Al Capone's gang and eliminate its leaders.
The article also failed to mention that thanks to American foreign policy, Al Qaeda was transformed from a handful of radical misanthropes to a global organization boasting tens if not hundreds of thousands of warriors and millions who support them. Cut off one head and ten grow in its place. Thank you, Washington.
Several weeks ago I posted a comment to the effect that the "war on terror" and the current far-right push to abolish any vestige of progressive America was all of a piece, that the bankrupting of this nation was not an accident, but done purposely, anticipating the election of a D after 8 years of Bush/Cneney.
I was taken to task by a poster whose screen name I don't recall. The poster alluded to all of the other factors that led to the financial collapse and how those things don't fit with my thesis. Unfortunately I can't stay here on many days that I post comments and did not see his/her reply until several days later when the thread had aged. I stand by what I said then, and here are the reasons why.
Despite their seeming unity of purpose and action the Bush administration was a collage of competing forces. One faction was the PNAC inspired militarists of Cheney et al bent on their vision of military and economic imperialism and US hegemony. Another faction was the Rove/Norquist vision of a permanent conservative majority in this country. The first seemed to serve the purposes of the second for a time as they scared the American populace into supporting the unfinanced debacle of PNAC militarism, jingoism, and racial/ethnic/religious fears.
I contend that the Cheney factor forced all other considerations into the background, such as keeping an eye on the store at home, not appreciating the growing signs of trouble with unregulated speculation not just in the housing market and its toxic derivatives, but of all ordinary commodities. The illegal wars WERE meant to starve all other aspects of our collective government of funds, but it was through hubris, overreach, and arrogance that "the adults" allowed powerful financial interest to devour itself, and us in the process.
These are not conclusions I formed in retrospect, but those that I suspected as I/we watched it happen in real time. The religious far-right that helped propel Bush to the WH (no I haven't forgotten Florida) became dissillusioned by their champions abandoning their agenda and the ground was laid for the "tea party" movement.
The determination of the Rove/Norquist faction has not waned though majority opinion has abandoned the "war on (of) terror." I suspect that Rove is a quaint anachronism who takes pleasure in winning the fantasy game of electoral politics, because as we all know here and as Jeremy Wright's interview illucidates, State and Federal elections are a charade meant only to placate the uninformed and the naive. There is only one party, the party of massive wealth.
If a government (read virtually all modern nation states) uses military reasoning and method for its prosecution of 'policy', it is not not possible to differentiate from that polarity in the domestic society it seeks to claim, because each individual is regarded as a 'resource' for that system. One is simply considered a greater or lesser component in survival of the system - with ego strokes that frequently demand at minimum, disregard for dignity. Expansion is the response of an extractive system, front-loaded, leaving scarcity in its wake, in acquisition terms and utterly negligent, by simple nature of design, when it comes to the mandated destruction, waste and pollution. What occurs on the material level is de facto forced to occur on the social level.
Case in point on the grand scale is the prosecution of the mandate for expansion by Monsanto from production of agent orange to terminator seeds. Or, the re-employment of successfully militarized individuals in the more lucrative private militias under the guise of antiquated notions of "pride" in "service". Killing is killing. Period. Systemically, it eventually kills the killer's capacity, morally, intellectually and creatively to approach life from any other perspective - that is - spiritual death - being unable to recognize that death as having occurred.
Mechanical/material/physical/Cartesian/ Newtonian (and other related nyms) as the rational basis for living - is experiencing a long predicted entropic decline. Unfortunately ears and their use is scorned and the braying barking mouth is the preferred narcissistic fanfare of "success".
The notions of 'cease and desist', moratorium, restraint, love, discipline, engagement, conversation, distinction between science and technology, and humility are treasure troves of health in teaching and learning. Enemy, like paradox, is a lens of fear well worth changing in exploration of options.
Religion, it its most essential form is an attempt to reconcile what is (or is normally) spiritually known inside even one's own thoughts, even on the electro-bio-chemical level as healthy wellness and life integrated in benign social capacity; what is 'known in your bones' and then making it in manifest in life. Isn't that what really brings health and joy?
Once again Bilmes and Stiglitz are spot on in a very few words. Ironically, the title is not quite right. It's not "America's Costly War Machine," as if the war machine is a creation of the state.
The state itself, the United States of America, is a war machine in the very fabric of its being. All actions and resources are directed toward the aim of conquering and controlling the world by the most evil use of violence in human history.
The quest is, of course, suicidal (See Moby Dick for a clear explanation and Hiroshima and Nagasaki for clear examples). The final problem is what Nazis called "the final solution." In its absolutely immoral and impossible quest, United States is taking the rest of humankind down with it.
So as we swirl into the maelstrom of our demise, I ask: "What would be a more accurate title for this otherwise strong piece?
"Recent congressional investigations have shown that roughly 1 of every 4* dollars spent on wartime contracting was wasted or misspent."
*by my reckoning that should read 4 of every 4.
corrected.
Hmmm
This is the result of a Government that owes its allegence and hence our money to a foreign country. Given the horrific state of the economy with real world unemployement well over 25% it is incredible that over 20% (yes 20%) of the ENTIRE US House of Representatives spent at least a week in Israel in August. No sane rational explanation could justify to the American people why their representatives believe that going to Israel is more important than going back the people that elected them and that they swore an oath to serve. It simple terms it is called treason.
Treason is what it is. Israel's influence over the United States is exactly what our founding fathers warned us about, and the FED banking system is what we fought against in the first place. George Washington is very sad, as am I whenever I think about what my generation has done to this country. Sorry about that world.
True conservatives would never set a different standard on war spending vs domestic spending. Moreover, they wouldn't engage in spending for nation building. It's too bad that their blind faith in corporatism and the inevitable political correctness that followed bastardized the word "conservative". Spending is spending no matter what and if any "conservative" wants to talk about defense spending, try health care for starters and let's put the wood and metal towards constructive purposes for a change.
The costly war machine works like banking. The cost of the wars is a sequence huge increasing and ongoing loans. The interest bill is high. When the US cannot even afford the interest bill, its default will collapse the world financial systems. Corporations take the money and stash it away.
Oil corporations take the money and stash it away. Jobs and the economy keep going on the energy sold, but at accumulative and increasing environmental cost.
The main aim of the US wars of terror are to grab and hold control of large remaining oil reserves in the middle east, regardless of all moral and future economic costs. The costs are incalculable and are incurred on present and future generations in the US and in the target nations.
Eventually the traditional energy sources will be too expensive, and the US will be bankrupted with long term costs, and its military will fail because it is dependent on expensive oil. Future costs of care for veterans and disability will not be paid because it will be unaffordable.