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US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4T dollars
- nibepins 6y agoSummary: - Over 801,000 people have died due to direct war violence, and several times as many indirectly - Over 335,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting - 37 million - the number of war refugees and displaced persons - The US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4 trillion dollars - The US government is conducting counterterror activities in 80 countries - The wars have been accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties, in the US and abroad
- dmarlow 6y agoBefore each war, leaders should sit down, write down hypothetical outcomes and see if they still feel it makes sense. Then, after the conflict, come back and see how their estimates were. I'm hopeful that people would be more prudent if they could foresee the impact of their decisions.
- temp0826 6y agoWould it ever make sense? This is not how greed and hatred work
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- nibepins 6y agoThey do that, it happens that "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
- nostromo 6y agoIt reminds me of a recent quote I saw in the news: "The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t [in love with me], because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy, but we're getting out of the endless wars."
- gumby 6y agoThat same person boasts about an increased pentagon budget. Where does he think that money goes? It doesn’t seem like either leading candidate has taken a position on the military-industrial complex.
- Jtsummers 6y agoThe fetishization (despite the massive reduction in the percentage of the population who have served) of the military in the US makes it really hard to take a strong stance against the MIC as a politician (aiming for the presidency, representatives and some senate seats have more freedom here).
- gumby 6y agoCongress less so: Rockwell was the pioneer in making sure every congressional district had a contractor or manufacturer making a part of the B-1 bomber to keep congress from cancelling it.
- belltaco 6y ago>“We’ve totally rebuilt the military — $2.5 trillion,” he said, going on to talk about a contract awarded to that shipbuilding company, Fincantieri Marinette Marine, “to build the next generation of guided missile frigates for the United States Navy.” >He then mentioned missiles, rockets and tanks, saying: “What we had were great people in the military, but they weren’t given the right equipment, so now they are. Two and a half trillion dollars. … We’ve invested the $2.5 trillion
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- save_ferris 6y agoI agree. One of the problems that arises, however, is that wars get passed down from administration to administration, and once that happens, nobody wants to be the one to pull out and have that on their legacy. It happened in Vietnam, and it's happening today in the Middle East. In both cases, the government knew early on that "total victory" was not possible, yet administrations kept pressing on. As long as leaders fear the political fallout of such major decisions, they will act in their best interest, even if it costs thousands of young lives.
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- jjcon 6y agoThose totals include all deaths in the region which includes ISIS and other conflicts - important info to include
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- jarym 6y agoLess money than the Fed has pumped into the economy over the same time period.
- ChomskyNormal4m 6y agoMuch of the reason for it is to pump money into the economy via Raytheon, Lockheed Martin etc. It all ultimately boils down to money.
- submeta 6y agoAnd despite all of the efforts the adversaries haven‘t effectively been taken down, the world is not a more secure place, the reputation of the US has taken damage, in a few years the next IS and taliban are coming, under another name.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoOf note is that Sept 11 was an extreme, one-off outlier. From 1975 to today, the US has been at historically low-levels of domestic terrorism. Five years prior (in 1970), the US reported 400 domestic terror attacks/year [1]. In 1971, the Pentagon Papers leak exposed massive & systemic FBI wrongdoing. Afterward, the agency was reformed and re-tasked into a law enforcement mission (until 2012). By 1975, domestic terrorism had sharply fallen & has remained at that low level since. [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/11/nine-facts-about-terrorism-in-the-united-states-since-911/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/11/nine-... [orig data source: Rand Corp]
- boomboomsubban 6y agoIt's worse than that. The Taliban is as strong as it ever was and there weren't groups like ISIS before these wars. Al-Qaeda had hundreds of members before 9/11, ISIS had tens to hundreds of thousands. Our "adversaries," generally people (admittedly not the nicest people) who want their sovereignty, have grown exponentially.
- pan69 6y ago> And despite all of the efforts the adversaries haven‘t effectively been taken down Some might argue that that wasn't even the objective and that the take down of adversaries was only a narrative created to justify the start of these wars.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoThe point of the war was never to accomplish anything. It was to burn money.
- newen 6y ago
- YarickR2 6y agoSo roughly 100 were killed for every american dead in 9/11. Thas's a harsh punishment, US certainly doesn't know what mercy is . Edit: missed by two orders of magnitude. Still, a lot. Also: not a blame, just observations.
- ChomskyNormal4m 6y agoThe US backed the jihadists (mujahidden) against the secular Saur government in the 1970s and 1980s, so that blew back from that too. Along with the US military opening foreign bases in the Arabian dictatorship a decade before 9/11 (military bases closed two years after 9/11).
- gridlockd 6y agoThe vast majority of these deaths are due to internal strife, they weren't killed on the orders of the US. In hindsight, the second war in Iraq was a disaster of course, but why blame the US for every bad part of the outcome? What about the Iraqis? What about Iran? If the US hadn't started that war, the regime may well have collapsed during the Arab spring. As for Afghanistan, that conflict started well before US involvement after 9/11.
- YarickR2 6y agoNo blame, just numbers.
- gridlockd 6y agoYou call it "harsh punishment" as if the US intended these consequences, because it knows "no mercy". That sounds like blame to me.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago>In hindsight, the second war in Iraq was a disaster of course, but why blame the US for every bad part of the outcome? What about the Iraqis? What about Iran? The US destroyed their lives. Their communities were destroyed, their jobs vanished, and their loved ones were dead. Many certainly reacted despicably, but the US deserves most of the blame. >If the US hadn't started that war, the regime may well have collapsed during the Arab spring. One of the major triggers for the Arab Spring was the US diplomatic cable leaks, and much of the military power any insurgents had was a result of US backing. Without the War on Terror, the Arab Spring would have been a completely different thing if it happened at all.
- pgustafs 6y agoA little arithmetic: 6.4T USD / 128M US households = 50K USD/household 50K USD/household/ 9 years = 5.5K USD/household/yr
- slezakattack 6y agoThat's pretty significant when you see that median household income across the nation ranged from $38,000/yr - $68,000/yr [1]. 5% - 13% of your paycheck going to a war [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Median_household_income_by_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...
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- ghego1 6y agoThanks for the additional context, the numbers are even more astonishing when compared to the median income
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoI believe the $6.4T doesn't include the >$1T spent domestically on security theater (TSA), NatSec tech used for low level crimes (eg: Fusion Centers) and bulk surveillance of Americans not suspected of a crime.
- gumby 6y agoYes, this refers only to waging war on foreigners. Waging war on Americans has its own budget.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoI woke up yesterday to a breaking news that the Trump admin announced new troop withdraws from Iraq and Afghanistan and was really encouraged. War is one of those things I’ve gone from hawk to dove on as I’ve become older. I want a total drawdown in the entire Middle East, and I would love to see the majority of our overseas bases closed.
- t0mbstone 6y agoHow many trillions of dollars has the USA saved on oil costs by keeping the middle east in a constant state of turmoil, though? https://www.cfr.org/timeline/oil-dependence-and-us-foreign-policy https://www.cfr.org/timeline/oil-dependence-and-us-foreign-p...
- nibepins 6y agoThat's a great question
- nickff 6y agoIt would have been much cheaper to buy off the Hussein family, and play them against the Iranians if cheap oil was the objective.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago...the US did do this... it's what led to the Iran-Iraq War
- stuntkite 6y agoyeesh... I mean, not that that data point isn't important but fucking hell is that grim.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoIt can't be all that many, since the US is now a net exporter.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago20 years later, after importing around 4 billion net barrels per year for that period. We now had seven months where we shipped around ten million more barrels per month than we imported. Back to a net importer as of May though. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTNTUS2&f=M https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
- davidf18 6y agoIs the $6.4T peer reviewed? How did they derive this amount of money? Is there an itemized breakdown?
- mytailorisrich 6y agoFrom the point of view of economics I suspect this is akin to a stimulus package because, again I suspect, that the bulk of that sum of money goes to American contractors and American personel.
- miles 6y ago"Bush Fired Larry Lindsey for Saying the War Might Cost $100 Billion" https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/bush-fired-larr.html https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/bush-fired-larr.html "On September 15, 2002, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Lindsey estimated the high limit on the cost of the Bush administration's plan in 2002 of invasion and regime change in Iraq to be 1–2% of GNP, or about $100–$200 billion. Mitch Daniels, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, discounted this estimate as 'very, very high' and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated that the costs would be under $50 billion. Rumsfeld called Lindsey's estimate 'baloney'." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_B._Lindsey#Cost_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_B._Lindsey#Cost_of_th...
- nibepins 6y agoAbout 10 minutes after this submission made to the top of HN's homepage, it disappeared from the homepage
- Jtsummers 6y agoIt's political content, it is almost certainly being flagged by a lot of people.
- jjcon 6y agoThat’s because it breaks HN rules
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoI guess HN has some un-utterable numbers of it's own.
- jjcon 6y agoIts right in the footer on every page https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- m0zg 6y agoReminder: Trump is the first president since Reagan to not start any wars.
- jcims 6y agoBefore 2000 we were spending ~$250B/y on defense budget. That alone would be $5T since 9/11.
- peter303 6y ago3 million veterans of these wars will require up to 80 years of veteran pension, health and disability services. WWII had 16 million veterans and Vietnam 9 million.
- ykevinator 6y agoBut no money for health care
- devvep 6y agoThat is bullshit. Everyone in the world knows that most dangerous countries are North Korea, Iran and Russia. So that US has to spend enormous amount of money to protect themselves.