Wars In Iraq And Afghanistan Cost Almost $5 Trillion

A new study into the financial cost of the U.S. campaigns in both Afghanistan and Iraq since the 9/11 terrorist attack indicate that the wars have cost American taxpayers nearly $5 trillion.

On Sept. 12, a new report conducted by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Affairs found that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will so far cost the U.S. $4.8 trillion, although the report indicates that that number could balloon to almost $8 billion, The Fiscal Times reports.

The institute stated that their $4.8 trillion estimate includes “direct congressional war appropriations; war-related increases to the Pentagon base budget; veterans care and disability; increases in the homeland security budget; interest payments on direct war borrowing; foreign assistance spending; and estimated future obligations for veterans’ care.”

The estimate does not include “macroeconomic costs to the U.S. economy; the opportunity costs of not investing war dollars in alternative sectors; future interest on war borrowing; and local government and private war costs.”

The study noted that the wars were funded almost exclusively on credit, meaning that the campaigns have contributed enormously to the U.S. budget deficit and national debt.

The institute estimated that, unless the U.S. immediately repaid its debts, it would face interest payments totaling $7.9 trillion by 2053.

Political scientist Neta Crawford of Boston University, the author of the study, told The Atlantic that the combined costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are the second most expensive military campaign since War War II, but that the cost has been made worse by the decision to fund the wars by borrowing.

Crawford noted that instead of raising taxes and helping fund the wars with war bonds, the administration of former President George W. Bush instead cut taxes and sold a minimal amount of war bonds.

Instead, the Bush administration largely funded the wars using U.S. debt. Crawford concludes that this led to everyday Americans have a detached relationship with the wars.

“If we hadn’t had such low interest rates, and Congress had moved, for example, to raise taxes instead of cut them, the public would have paid attention to these wars in a different way,” Crawford said.

In the report, Crawford asserted that the gravest cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could not be accounted for in dollars, according to the Military Times.

“A full accounting of any war’s burdens cannot be places in columns on a ledger,” Crawford wrote. “From civilians harmed or displaced by violence, to the soldiers killed and wounded, to the children who play years later on roads and fields sown with improvised explosive devices and cluster bombs, no set of numbers can convey the human toll of the wars.”

Sources: The Atlantic, The Fiscal Times, Military Times / Photo Credit: The U.S. Army/Flickr