In their joint report — Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the “War on Terror” — Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War concluded that this number is staggering, with at least 1.3 million lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone since the onset of the war following September 11, 2001.
However, the report notes, this is a conservative estimate, and the total number killed in the three countries “could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely.”
Furthermore, the researchers do not look at other countries targeted by U.S.-led war, including Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and beyond.
The total U.S. budgetary cost of war since 2001 is $4.79 trillion, according to a report released this week from Brown University’s Watson Institute. …
Neta Crawford of Boston University, the author of the report, included interest on borrowing, future veterans needs, and the cost of homeland security in her calculations. …
There are even more costs of war that Crawford does not include, she writes. For instance, “I have not included here state and local government expenses related to medical care of veterans and homeland security. Nor do I calculate the macro economic costs of war for the U.S. economy.” She also notes that she does not add the cost of war for other countries, nor try to put a dollar figures on the cost in human lives.
http://theintercept.com/2016/09/14/latest-estimate-pegs-cost-of-wars-at-nearly-5-trillion/
So what now?
Clinton has staked out more hawkish positions than Obama, dating back to her vote for the war in Iraq when she was a New York senator. She kept that reputation when she was secretary of State, becoming one of the leading voices in the administration pushing for military intervention in Libya.
She has also sought a more active role for the U.S. military in the Syrian civil war, the bloody, 5-year-old conflict that has empowered Islamic State militants while pitting rebels against government forces. Clinton and other Obama advisors wanted to train and arm some opposition groups, but Obama declined, though he relented after she left his Cabinet, with the CIA delivering weapons to some groups starting in 2013.
In addition, she has pushed for a no-fly zone to protect civilians fleeing the conflict, and she’s suggested putting U.S. forces on the ground to fight Islamic State, though she cautions that she would not seek a full-scale combat mission.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-clinton-obama-differences-20160729-snap-htmlstory.html
I generally begin my arguments for or against not necessary proposed government killing with a humanitarian appeal. When that fails, which it usually does, I move on to logical arguments that the killing solves nothing. That to usually fails; so, I introduce government costs (most people equate government costs as costs to taxpayers; so I don’t dwell on that) which are more persuasive.
In January 2003 a friend was on the fence wrt to an invasion of Iraq and I mentioned costs. He said, “I hear it will only cost $20 billion and Iraq’s oil will pay for it.” I laughed and he said, “Okay, how much?” Me, in-n-out can’t be done for less than $120 billion and we’ll eat it.
Thirty days in, I amended the $120 billion to $150. Sixty days in , I amended that to $200 billion. Ninety days in, my friend asked me for a cost projection update. My response was, no can do because they don’t have an exit strategy. He said, “Assume everything goes well from now on. How much?”
I might have chuckled, but went ahead and said, “You know I’m just making this up off the top of my head and we’ll never know the true cost, don’t you.” He was fine with that and pressed me for a guesstimate. I said that we were in for no less than half a billion. After swearing, he allowed that he had that number been thrown out there before the invasion, he would never have considered supporting it.
Soon enough the numbers became incomprehensible to the average American; so, we don’t allow ourselves to think about it.
There might have been public resistance to the true $4.8 trillion price tag. It would have been necessary to emphasize how much would be accomplished with the money.
At $4.8 trillion, the public would have balked regardless of what Bush/Cheney tried to sell as what could be accomplished. There was a reason by BushCo presented that $20 billion figure, and that Iraqi oil would pay for it, the public choke point was low. My guess tops $50 billion and then it would have been a bare majority that said OK.
1.3 million lives, $4.79 trillion!!!
Human lives sure are expensive!!!
1.3 million lives exterminated at a cost of$4.79 trillion, eh?
That comes out to $3,684,615.39 per life!!!
Good work, guys and gals!!!
AG
P.S. Of course, these numbers are sheer guesswork leavened with a healthy dose of ass-covering. But since that’s pretty much average for most of this society’s functions, we may as well take it as gospel.
P.P.S. When I did the math on a calculator I kept on coming up with similar numbers and believed that somehow I must have been dropping zeros or something. That number is just too obscene. So I went to Google and typed “4.79 trillion divided by 1.3 million equals,” and this is what popped up.
The obscenity of this system at work. Even Hitler was more efficient. Bet on it.
And we call ourselves “great!!!”
Leaving aside the human costs in deaths and totally ruined lives (either physically or economically), the mere budgetary costs of American militarism are simply inconceivable. And the ubiquitous selling of these costs as essential to Protectin’ Our Freeedum! beyond risable. I can no longer stand to listen to the shit that comes out of our elected leaders’ mouths on the subject, as it is just one phony platitude after another. Equally appalling (as Marie notes) is our blithe unconcern about destroying the lives of so many hapless civilians across the globe as collateral damage to our grossly exaggerated fears and braindead geo-strategy.
We are the unapologetic Prussia of the 21st century and thrusting the accountant’s calculations of the true costs of our mindless folly into the consciousness of the citizenry (assuming that could somehow be accomplished) would not have the slightest effect on the majority of Americans, who coo with delight at the appalling spectacle of perfectly timed F-16 squadrons parading over the Holiest of Holies, the Super Bowl (genuflect). And since the cost to the Treasury is meaningless, so is the butcher’s bill.
But a trillion here and a trillion there and at some point you’re talking real money, ha-ha. What one’s national debt amounts to does matter, sad to say. As for the opportunity costs, that is a concept that college graduates don’t understand. So onward to the next war of choice, consequences be damned.