Iraq War Perspective
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Foreign Policy, Money1. The newspaper today states one minute of war in Iraq costs US$380,000. A calculation made by Joseph Stiglitz, a US Nobelprize winning economist. That is almost double the cost of the war in Vietnam.2. According to WFP, the UN’s food aid organisation, it costs US$0.19 to feed a child for a day. Nineteen cents. 20,000 children die of hunger every day. The time it took you to read this post, already 15 died.
3. Taking those two figures together, one minute of war in Iraq would feed 2,000,000 children for a day. One day of war in Iraq would feed 20,000,000 children for a year.
Now extend that same idea into all the other problems we have in this country and you’ve got something to really think about. So yes, why are we doing this again? Is it really worth it? Will we continue to be a liberating force that gets mired into hugely expensive conflicts that go on for years on end for little or no pay off?
I say no way. We need to start focusing stateside before the costs to fix some of our problems get so huge they’re nearly impossible to solve.
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March 19th, 2007 at 9:32 am
As a percentage of what the United States earns, only the first Gulf War was a less expensive American war. Click here to see what I mean.
If these forces prevent the ascendancy of Salafist Islam in the 21st century, then it would be worth any price.
March 19th, 2007 at 11:01 am
So what price exactly? The health of our nation? Our superpower status in the world? Or economic supremacy?
Because make no mistake, that’s what we’re beginning to put at risk when we take our eye off the domestic policy and instead spend billions we don’t have on wars we never needed to fight in the first place.
March 19th, 2007 at 11:37 am
No wonder the whole world hates us… we’re starving their children so we can play at war!
March 19th, 2007 at 11:40 am
I’d be a lot more impressed by statements about “the most expensive [whatever] in history” if the people making them ever, ever, adjusted the so-called “costs” for inflation.
Between Vietnam and the first Gulf War, just for example, prices increased by a factor of about 10. And inflation has continued in the decade and a half since. Which means that Iraq could have a nominal cost of 10 times Vietnam, and still cost less in constant dollars — which is the only meaningful way to compare costs (although the percentage of GDP comparison would also be a step forward).
Note: this is not intended as a defense of any particular national policy. It’s strictly an expression of irritation of people making statements which are based on meaningless numbers.
March 19th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
People, the numbers ARE NOT meaningless. This is real money that we’re spending on wars that we could be spending on fixing our social security system, healthcare system, etc. But we aren’t.
We can grouse all we want about comparing these dollars to those dollars, but in there and now, we could be doing better with our tax dollars, no? Seems like Iraq is a waste of tax dollars, yes? And it won’t just be us paying for it, it’ll be our grandkids. Still think the war is worth it? I certainly don’t, especially if it’s at the expense of our long term stability as a country.
March 19th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
March 19th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Justin, the point is not that we could be doing something better with these dollars. The comparison I was specifically addressing was that the Iraq War is costing more than the Vietnam War — sorry if I was not sufficiently clear on that. Because, in constant dollars or even as a percentage of GDP, it isn’t.
We can always argue priorities for spending the Federal government’s money. But that’s a different discussion from the relative prices of different wars at different point in time.