Journal of the mental environment
By our most conservative estimates, the Iraq War has cost an almost unimaginable $3 trillion. A more realistic estimate, however, is closer to $5 trillion – once you include all the downstream “off-budget costs” of long-term veteran benefits and treatment, the costs of restoring the now-depleted military to its pre-war strength, the considerable costs of actually withdrawing from Iraq and repositioning forces elsewhere in the region.
Then there are the micro costs. For example, if a solider gets killed, his family gets a $500,000 lifetime payment. That is not included in the public budget when the costs of the war are considered.
These costs are real and are not going away. You can’t continue to sweep them under the rug. Like your credit card bill, the costs only grow greater if you ignore them.
Finally, anybody who says we ought to stay in Iraq for even another four years, no less the next 100 years, as John McCain has suggested, has to honestly tell the American people how they are going to pay the $12 billion-a-month bill. Where are we going to come up with another $1.2 trillion? And is that going to make America more secure?
Let’s get out sooner rather than later. Above all, let’s stop fantasizing. It’s those fantasies that got us in trouble.
Excerpt from an interview with Joseph Stiglitz
NPQ Spring 2008
Recent Issues
We are a global network of culture jammers who are working to change the way meaning is produced in our society.
Current Issue
User login
Web Feeds
Note: If the links don’t work, please copy the feed URLs and paste into your news readers such as Google Reader.
Comments
The 500,000 is the life insurance policy for a U.S. servicemember. That comes on top of the death gratuity.
Perhaps I'm mistaken,but how do you think the likes of Saddam Hussein would deal with free thinkers who'd even dare to visit this site.Yeah the system sucks,but the oilfields hold the key to future survival and therefore the ability to bring about change in society.If it ain't secured we'll be scattered like weeds...
You must have the most coloful imagination o come up with conclusions like that...
Odd that adbusters is considering the COST of the war in dollar amounts and not the fact that it was a giant war crime committed under false pretenses that claimed un unkown amount of lives.
No one responsible for the war is going to pay for it. No one in the Bush administration got so much as a slap on the wrists. Instead, the rich and poltically enfranchised are going to reap the benefits of the war while everyone else pays for the human and economic toll. We can whine all we want but nothing is going to get done. All responsible will die peacefully in their beds. Hell, Kissenger is still walking around.
Enjoy your democracy America, you let it happen. You can blame the corporate thieves and their buddies in Washington but until the people get active nothing of substance is going to be achieved.
Where are theses numbers are coming from?
It is true that a lot of intagible costs have an huge impact on the american economy.
But it would be nice to get the source that confirm theses numbers...
The American government doesn't care about cost. That's what we have tax payers and the largest national deficit in history for; to cover the cost.
Pretty sure the net payout for a death is $17,000, but you could be right. In either case, the real cost in impossible to determine as we don't know what the gross national production of those dead soldiers might have been. That, itself begas the question as to whether what might have been was ever meant to be. The cost of war is immeasurable, and were the war worthy, we would fail to ask the cost. The real cost of war isn't the effect on our bank accounts but on our sense of moral sensibilities.
Harry the Hobo Widdifield
http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/33811/harry_the_hobo_widdifield.ht...
"If the natives aren't lighting torches, you didn't say it right"