Useful estimates of the full costs of the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan

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	• The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict Joseph E. Stiglitz, Linda J. Bilmes W. W. Norton, 2008 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Useful estimates of the full costs of the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan

Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, and Linda Bilmes, a lecturer at Harvard, have produced an estimate of the real cost of the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, 4,000 US troops have been killed, 58,000 wounded, and 100,000 have returned home with serious mental disorders. Stiglitz and Bilmes estimate that the USA's total lifetime medical, disability and social security costs for the two wars will be $717 billion through to 2017.

They estimate that the war against Iraq will cost the USA a total of $2.65 trillion through to 2017. The war on Afghanistan will cost another $850 billion through to 2017. The total is $3.5 trillion. (Bush misunderestimated it would be $50 billion, wrong by a factor of seventy.) This works out at $25,000 for every US household.

The costs of the two wars to the rest of the world are another $3 trillion, largely because the invasion has driven up oil prices from $25 a barrel to $120. This has cost the world $800 billion so far, and will have cost an estimated $1.6 trillion by 2015. It has cost us in Britain £24 billion so far, and will have cost an estimated £50 billion by 2015.

The wars' direct military costs to us in Britain so far are £8.7 billion; the estimated future costs till 2015 are another £7 billion. Veterans' disability and medical costs are £2.3 billion. The social costs of deaths and disabilities are another £2 billion. The total is £20 billion, £800 per household.

The First World War cost the USA $577 billion, the war on Korea $295 billion, the war on Vietnam $670 billion and the Gulf War $94 billion. The total cost of these four wars was $1.64 trillion, which is just half the cost of the two current wars.

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More than the Administration wants you to know

We all know that entry into the Iraq war was based on false notions about non-existent weapons of mass destruction. What is less likely, is whether we remember what we were told it would cost: Less than $50 billion - will take only area weeks - six months at the outside. A secretary of the treasury even lost his job because he said it might cost $200 billion. Oh if it were only true!

This text documents the true cost. Aside from the direct expenses of $700 billion, and more than 4000 American live, wemust account for the tens of thousands wounded- their care and lost productivity.

This text is filled with statistics. The argument is persuasive - even overwhelming in its detail. The text does not stray far fromeconomics to make tie argument, nor does it need to. The facts speak clearly and loudly.

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HAL doesn't share/holders

Very provoking. Though I just want to correct page 15 where Stiflitz/Blimes says sole source contracting makes "Excess profits for defense contractors and oil companies. . . . Halliburton's stock price has increased 229 percent since the war began." THIS IS NOT TRUE. HAL has gone back and forth from 35 to 45 since the war began. THESE CONTRACTORS NEVER SHARE THEIR ILLICIT GAINS WITH THEIR SHAREHOLDERS. THAT GOES FOR OIL COMPANIES TOO. They keep all their ill-gotten gains for themselves. They are selfish greedy crooks! The book is otherwise spot on.

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Accounting of Folly

This concise and well written book is a serious attempt to make a reasonable estimate of the cost of the Iraq War. The authors are the Nobelist economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, a specialist on public finance. The authors develop estimates for the direct Federal budgetary costs, the remarkably large longterm cost of providing health care benefits for injured Veterans, additional costs not covered by Federal outlays, and macroeconomic costs. This accounting proved to be surprisingly difficult; much of the relevant information is scattered, actually hidden, and the authors are quite critical of frustratingly lax government accounting standards that are an obstacle to assessing costs. Important estimates are quite literally that, estimates. Assessing the fraction of the Pentagon's regular budget that goes to the war and the fraction of increased oil prices due to the war is informed guess work, though the authors attempt to make conservative estimates.

Virtually all of the subtotals and the final total are remarkably high. Stiglitz and Bilmes provide both a very optimistic and what they regard as a more realistic set of projections. Even the lower estimate in enormous. The magnitude of these effects is so large that subtraction of erroneous estimates of some individual costs will still leave trillions of dollars of costs. While this projection is unilikely to be precisely accurate, Stiglitz and Bilmes are certainly in the neighborhood.

Written as something of a polemic, this book has some other interesting features. It is full of interesting facts. For example, applications to most of the service academies are down by 10%-20%, something remarkable during a period when college applications have reached a all time high. This book contains the best concise set of arguments for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq I've read.

Stiglitz and Bilmes conclude with a set of specific policy recommendations. Many are procedural, such as forbidding use of emergency appropriations for war funding after one year of combat. Other, such as many of the recommendations for veterans care, are administrative reforms. Virtually all seem to be sensible though few will actually be established. The long term effect of this book is likely to be greater and more stringent attention to the long term economic consequences of American involvement in wars.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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