The project Costs of War was started more than a decade ago at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs in America. Now he releases his influential annual report to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Inside are the merciless results of the "War on Terror" that resulted.
The war was long and complex, horrible and unsuccessful… and still continues in over 80 countries. The Pentagon and the US military have absorbed the majority of the federal discretionary budget, and most people don't know it. Our job, now and in future years, is to educate the public about the ways we finance those wars.
Catherine Lutz, co-director of Costs of War
The economic balance? Scary. The human one? Worse
The economic cost estimate is frightening: 8 trillion dollars. This is the sum of all the direct costs of the wars born since 11/2021. It contains funding for Department of Defense overseas contingency operations. The State Department's war spending. Caring for veterans and their families. This and more, in detail, including the money the Biden administration has requested for the withdrawal from Afghanistan in May XNUMX.
The report comes at the end of the controversial US withdrawal from Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents seized every major city and took control of the government as American military units worked to bring 123.000 soldiers, diplomats and allies to safety. According to the report, of the $ 8 trillion, $ 2,3 trillion is attributed to the Afghanistan / Pakistan war zone.
Il death toll it is even more frightening: it is between 897.000 and 929.000. A figure that includes US military personnel, allies, “enemies”, civilians, journalists and humanitarian workers killed as a direct result of war, whether by bombs, bullets or fire. Not to mention, the researchers note, the many indirect deaths that the war on terror has caused due to disease, displacement and loss of access to food or drinking water.
More than 900.000 deaths born from 11/XNUMX. And it is a highly underestimated figure.
“The deaths we calculated are probably a vast underestimate of the true toll these wars took on human life,” he says Neta Crawford, co-founder of the project and professor of political science at Boston University. “It is critical that we adequately account for the vast and varied consequences of the many U.S. wars and counterterrorism operations since 11/XNUMX as we pause and reflect on all the lives lost.”
On August 31, in a speech to the nation, US President Joe Biden cited these same estimates of the costs of the war to defend his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.
“We no longer had a clear purpose,” the US President said. “After more than $2 trillion spent in Afghanistan, costs researchers estimated would be more than $300 million per day for 20 years. I refuse to send America's sons and daughters to fight a war that should have ended long ago.”
But Biden is wrong about that, because the war isn't over this time either.
September 11 has not finished killing
Even after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Costs of War estimates show that the post-11/XNUMX war on terror continues across multiple continents. The cumulative cost of military intervention in the war zone Iraq / Syria has risen to $2,1 trillion since 11/355, and about $XNUMX billion more has funded military presence in other countries, including Somalia and a handful of African countries.
Even (if and) when the wars are over, the costs will remain: a whopping $ 2,2 trillion of the estimated financial total goes to future care that has already been set aside for military veterans, the researchers say. And the planet could pay the cost of environmental damage caused by wars for generations to come.
What have we really achieved in 20 years of post 11/XNUMX wars and at what price?
Who or what have we avenged, as we have honored the victims of 11/11? at the Watson Institute have no doubts, and I don't have any doubts looking to the future either. Twenty years from now, we will still be dealing with the high social costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, forty years after September XNUMXth.
To make sense, it will only be remembering and commemorating those who are no longer there. Peace and honor not received.
