Author’s note:
While it is impossible to quantify the real costs of Bush’s wars (now Obama’s), this new report puts it WAY higher than previous estimates. Are the pentagon and the CBO lying to us? You decide…
Excerpt:
A new report from Brown University estimates that the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – together with the counterinsurgency efforts in Pakistan – will cost $4 trillion and leave 225,000 dead, both civilians and soldiers.
The Watson institute of Brown University engaged a group of economists, anthropologists, lawyers, humanitarian personnel, and political scientists to study the both the long and short term costs to U.S. taxpayers.
The new estimate nearly quadruples the figures that can be found on the cost of war counter published by the National Priorities Project. It is also astoundingly more than the $1 trillion figure named in 2010 by the CBO in a Reuters report, which ignored significant portions of current and future military spending.
The project estimated that the cost alone of caring for the veterans injured in the wars will reach $1 trillion in 30 or 40 years. In estimating the $4 trillion total, they did not take into account the $5.3 billion in reconstruction spending the government has promised Afghanistan, state and local contributions to veteran care, interest payments on war debt, or the costs of Medicare for veterans when they reach 65.
While the ongoing debates regarding out of control government spending and the debt ceiling rage on, few seem to mention that cost of the ongoing wars are largely to blame for that debt. The defense budget and war appropriations are a much larger burden on taxpayers than any sort of social services or money spent on improving the infrastructure of the U.S.
Perhaps it is time for the fiscal “hawks” to advocate cutting unnecessary spending in areas where it would be really beneficial to U.S. taxpayers. Ending the wars would lift a huge financial tax burden from the shoulders of U.S. citizens.
For more findings in the report, read more here: Madison Independent Examiner