Earlier this month, a Nobel Prize winning Economist noted that the total cost of the War in Iraq is likely to reach $ 3 trillion:
There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no such thing as a free war. The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can’t spend $3 trillion — yes, $3 trillion — on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.
Some people will scoff at that number, but we’ve done the math. Senior Bush administration aides certainly pooh-poohed worrisome estimates in the run-up to the war. Former White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey reckoned that the conflict would cost $100 billion to $200 billion; Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld later called his estimate “baloney.” Administration officials insisted that the costs would be more like $50 billion to $60 billion. In April 2003, Andrew S. Natsios, the thoughtful head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said on “Nightline” that reconstructing Iraq would cost the American taxpayer just $1.7 billion. Ted Koppel, in disbelief, pressed Natsios on the question, but Natsios stuck to his guns. Others in the administration, such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, hoped that U.S. partners would chip in, as they had in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, or that Iraq’s oil would pay for the damages
But that didn’t happen and now we’re paying an historical price:
In historical perspective, the Iraq conflict is already one of the most expensive conflicts in U.S. history.
The price tag in Iraq now is more than double the cost of the Korean War and a third more expensive than the Vietnam War, which lasted 12 years. Stiglitz and Bilmes calculate that it will be at least 10 times as costly as the 1991 Gulf War and twice the cost of World War I.
Only World War II was more expensive. That four-year war - in which 16 million U.S. troops were deployed on two fronts, fighting against Germany and Japan - cost about $5 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars.
And that was a global war fought across two oceans and three continents.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Can you really put a pricetag on freedom?
Oh wait. i think freedom costs a buck of five.(from team america)
March 18th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Rick,
So it’s the job of America to spend blood and treasure to guarantee everyone’s freedom ?
When do you suggest we launch campaigns in Tibet, North Korea, Taiwan, and pretty much the entire continent of Africa ?