Real cost of Iraq/Afghan war: $1.5 trillion

A new report by Congressional Democrats estimates the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars at around $1.5 trillion, almost double the $800 billion “officially” requested by the Bush administration. The report estimates the conflict’s hidden costs, including the drastic rise in the price of oil, the expense of treating wounded veterans, the interest payments that have to be made (primarily to foreign central banks) since the war is being financed by debt, and the costs to US employers of having reservists deployed overseas.

$1.5 trillion amounts to $20,000 per household. How do you feel about your family paying $20,000 to fund the deposing of a dictator who had no weapons of mass destruction, to liberate a country that clearly did not want our Abu Ghraib-stained brand of “liberation,” to financially support the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis and Shiites that has taken place because of our lack of a post-war strategy?

I do not agree that Iraq is solely responsible for the skyrocketing cost of oil–it has nothing to do with dwindling wells in Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and other locations, a frightening topic all on its own but one that is unrelated to Iraq. Of course oil production has been disrupted in the war-torn country so Iraq does contribute somewhat to the higher cost of oil, but it’s impossible to say how much. Nevertheless, even the conservative commentators in the article agree that the war’s cost is far higher than what Bush has tried to feed the public, especially in his attempt to hide costs by using “supplemental” appropriations and not counting the war costs when calculating deficits.

Speaking of outrageous costs, the Boston Globe and National Priorities Project inform us of what we might have purchased (from a uniquely Bostonian perspective) with a “mere” $611 billion out of what the war has cost (thanks to my friend angry-biscuit for the heads up):

Nearly 14 million years’ worth of tuition, room, and board at Harvard. At published rates for this year, $611 billion translates into almost 14 million free rides for a year at Harvard University. Tuition and fees at the University of Massachusetts-Boston could be paid for over 53 million years.

Nearly 4,000 Newton North High Schools. Tagged as the most expensive high school in Massachusetts, at $154.6 million, the construction design for the new Newton North High School could be replicated almost 4,000 times using the money spent on the war.

40 Big Digs: At almost $15 billion, Boston’s Central Artery project has been held up as the nation’s most expensive public works project. Now multiply that by 40 and you’re getting close to US taxpayers’ commitment to democracy in Iraq – so far.

Almost 18 months’ worth of free gas for everyone. US drivers consume approximately 384.7 million gallons of gasoline a day. Retail prices averaged $3.00 a gallon in early November. Breaking it down, $611 billion could buy gasoline for everybody in the United States, for about 530 days.

Many, many environment-friendly cars on the road. With $611 billion, you could convert all cars in America to run on ethanol nine times over. TheBudgetGraph.com estimates that converting the 136,568,083 registered cars in the United States to ethanol (conversion kits at $500) would cost $68.2 billion.

More than a year’s worth of Medicare benefits for everyone. In fiscal 2008, Medicare benefits will total $454 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation summary. The $611 billion in war costs is 17 times the amount vetoed by the president for a $35 billion health benefit program for poor children.

A looong contract for Dice-K. The Red Sox and Daisuke Matsuzaka agreed on a six-year, $52 million contract. The war cost could be enough to have Dice-K mania for more than 70,000-some years at this year’s rate.

A real war on poverty: According to World Bank estimates, $54 billion a year would eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally by 2015, while $30 billion would provide a year of primary education for every child on earth. At the upper range of those estimates, the $611 billion cost of the war could have fed and educated the world’s poor for seven years.

Not saying we should be giving free gas to everyone–but some of those stats hurt, such as what we could have done to curb global warming, poverty, lack of educational opportunities, and the like. Not mentioned is how we could have sunk the money into nanotechnology and its promise of millions of future jobs, into increasing energy efficiency and reducing our addiction to fossil fuels, into solving the soaring costs of health care, into desalination plants to address the impending water crisis being felt from Atlanta to Tennessee, and a host of other really urgent matters that would have been a far better use of that money.

The price of seven years of the Bush regime keeps mounting.

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Tagged as: afghanistan, budget-deficit, bush, iraq