The Suit Magazine

Although President Barack Obama announced in October the withdrawal of the remaining 40,000 troops from Iraq by Christmas, anti-war critic Noam Chomsky contends that American taxpayers, in part, will inherit the inevitable price tag from the countless wars fought in the Middle East.

“These are actions not taken for the benefit of the domestic population,” Chomsky explained to The Suit. “Quite the contrary; they are costs, a burden for them.”

Proof of this burden is buried in a blistering report dubbed “The Cost of War,” released this year by the Brown University Institute for International Studies. To compile the report, groups of senior professors, economists and military spending experts mulled over hundreds of documents to calculate the contentious cost of conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The statistics are staggering. In the decade since U.S. troops went into Afghanistan, in part to search for the Al-Qaeda forces behind the 9/11 attacks, total expenditures on the conflicts have reached an amount between $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion. The latest great expense, the report says, is the launching of drone aircrafts targeting militants in Yemen and Pakistan. When it comes to human lives, the report offers plenty of alarming figures: “More than 2.2 million Americans have gone to war and over a million have returned veterans,” but more alarming are the civilian death tolls. The report contends, “wars in the Middle East have claimed an estimated 225,000 casualties.” Costs will continue to rise dramatically, especially considering the necessary long-term commitment to wounded veterans and further projected war spending from 2012 through 2020. These numbers do not include an estimated $1 trillion in interest payments and many billions more in unforeseen debt, the report says.

Catherine Lutz, co-director of the study, said a detailed assessment of the cost of war should raise a crucial question: what did the U.S. gain from these trillions spent? “The long term consequences include massive debt. Remember, this is borrowed money,” Lutz remarks. “Obviously, our American reputation is on the decline as a result of the ‘invasions.’”

Lutz argues that the lack of transparency in the Pentagon has been a troubling reality. “I think the American public wants to know about our foreign policy decisions,” she added. “A number of defense contracting companies have been profiteering from this fraud, waste and abuse.”

Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information, agrees. “The Department of Defense has been keeping sloppy records.  We have inherited huge costs that the veterans of these wars will be paying for decades. For these wars, we have incurred huge national debts. The spending for these wars was a major part of the run-up of debt started under George Bush and continued under President Barack Obama. And for rebuilding the physical equipment over the last ten years that has crapped out, and for the veterans, we’ll be paying for decades,” Wheeler said. “This incompetence has been with us for three decades at least, and you have to suspect that it’s not just by incompetence, but by design. Since the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 was passed, the DOD has repeatedly promised to clean up its books by a certain date in the future. It’s never met its deadline. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the House Arms Service Committee recently that he was going to accelerate that deadline. Time will tell.  I would be very surprised if they meet their criteria. It will be a superficial audit,” he said. “We have incurred bills that we have to be paid whether you like it or not. We are morally obligated to support these vets who have come home, with various problems that the nation has imposed on them, for a decade into the future.”

At the same time, Wheeler claims that Congress should step up to the plate regarding the Pentagon’s spending. “We should have an operative functioning Congress that can study these things and require the kinds of audits that are needed,” he said.

Economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, takes a more detailed look at the countless wars fought by United States, arguing that it’s a good economic indicator for the future. “World War II actually did finally get us out of the Depression. That was the only thing that gave the political will to spend the money. In that sense, World War II from an economic vantage point was actually a positive, insofar as that it is the only way you can spend money to get out a political depression,” he said.

But, certainly, the 1960s brought different political climate. And as the Vietnam War pressed on, the United States was virtually alienated. Protests and riots exploded on the national scene. And many politicians were pitted against each other on both sides. Vietnam was a national debacle costing an estimated 58,000 American lives and billions of dollars. “But in the case of Vietnam, the economy was not in a downturn but in a period of very good growth,” Baker said, “which was directly pulling away resources from the productive economy. So we had less investments, spent less on education. We had fewer workers here as part of a productive economy, because we had many resources devoted to the Vietnam War.”

September 11th 2001 changed the game entirely; now we’re fighting expensive battles during the worst economic period in almost 75 years. “In the case of Afghanistan right now,” Baker explained, “I can’t say that’s pulling resources away from a productive economy, except insofar as we might say that if we weren’t spending that money on the military, we would have support for spending on infrastructure, education or some productive use.”

Meanwhile, Congress has proposed to cut at least $450 billion from the military budget over the next decade. This is only a start, and with a disappointing record of defense contractors, politicians and government officials having their way with military spending, it’s worthwhile to ask whether American workers will be left holding the bag. Historically, the Pentagon’s extravagancies have wasted taxpayers’ money. But in the end, Chomsky said he supports a non-partisan commission to assess the financial cost of the war. “Can’t hurt,” he said. “I doubt it will come up with much that we don’t already know.” 

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