Our mission to Iraq and Afghanistan has cost $357 billion over three years, according to a paper by Columbia Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. As Stiglitz and Bilmes show, we are currently spending $7.1 billion per month. In January, then, we spent approximately $229 million per day. On a finer level, the per capita cost means that each of us at the UW owes the Feds $1,200. In that light, we should ask ourselves three questions: What benefits have we seen from the war? Why has the cost been so high? And finally, has it been worth it to our republic? Sadly, the answers are as negative as the debt.
Despite throwing the U.S. Treasury at them, terrorists have struck more often since we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. According to State Department statistics, various terrorists attacked their enemies between 175 and 208 times in 2003. In 2004, the number of terrorist attacks rose to approximately 650.
While a large plurality of 2004's terror attacks occurred in Pakistan and India, many attacks occurred in Iraq. 35,000 non-terror attacks were launched by insurgents there in 2005 alone. While it is true that U.S. policy has scant bearing on the Indian-Pakistani Kashmir conflict, it is equally true that our $357 billion effort spawned the Iraqi contribution to the terrorism boom. Had we not invaded Iraq, for example, the terror organization al Qaeda in Iraq would not be thriving.Money, then, is no magic bullet.
Rather, our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan probably wish to bankrupt us. Post-World War II colonial rebels have often used low intensity, 'asymmetric' methods, seeking to enervate, rather than annihilate, their Western enemies. In this vein, an Iraqi insurgent constructs a car bomb in his bedroom. Meanwhile, our government gives Boeing and Lockheed Martin $9.55 billion to develop F-22 Raptor fighter jets. Raptors are 'cool,' but of little use against car bombs.
Put another way, the insurgents plan to wait until we sufficiently frustrate ourselves. After our experience in Vietnam, you'd think our leadership would avoid falling for the same trap again. Even the rigid Soviets, who fought their own war in Afghanistan, warned that fighting a guerilla war in Central Asia is like trying to 'nail jelly to a wall.'
Unfortunately, our leadership behaves as if victory in Iraq and Afghanistan is simply an issue of money and firepower. Not willing to puncture that na??ve executive bubble, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that our spending in Iraq and Afghanistan will top out at a mere $500 billion. Let's hope the Budget Office is right, because Stiglitz and Bilmes estimate the coming decade may bump the total cost to $1 trillion, or possibly $2 trillion, counting indirect costs like higher oil prices, interest payments and medical expenses.
So far, spending $357 billion in the 'war on terror' hasn't worked. Why should we assume that spending $1 trillion in Iraq alone will work? Though our mission looks increasingly bleak, we prefer to believe our ears. We buy the White House propaganda, ignoring Hamas' recent electoral victory, Iran's new-found influence in Baghdad and the Taliban's resurgence.
After all, skepticism might lead us to ascribe cupidity to our leadership, and few like to think their own leaders are foul. However, as Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show' recently noted, the 'facts... have an anti-Bush agenda.' It increasingly appears our government has wasted $357 billion'and waste on this level is, at best, sufficiently negligent and incompetent to the point of approaching outright theft.
In fact, the amount of money we have already poured into Iraq and Afghanistan is mind-boggling. If 357 billion $1 bills were laid end to end, the string would stretch 34.5 million miles away from Madison, reaching the planet Venus. It seems that $357 billion is a meaninglessly large sum, especially when it describes the cost of a campaign to modernize hostile Muslims by force of JDAM bombs and Specter gunships.
But what of the other number, so far unmentioned, the number with such terrible meaning? If our leadership wastes money, what about lives? If we lay our 2,242 dead soldiers lengthwise, head to foot in a chain, the corpses would stretch over two miles, or roughly the distance from one end of Arlington National Cemetery to the other, and back.
