OMNI $COSTS$ OF WARS NEWSLETTER #3, June 30, 2011, Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace. (Newsletter #1 January 14, 2011; #2 April 5, 2011).
Contents of #1
Books
Letter by Gladys
Code Pink: End the Wars
Robert Higgs
Daniel Ellsberg
Barney Frank and Ron Paul
More
Contents of #2
Warfare or Health Care?
How Much You Paid for the Wars
5 Myths of Military $$
From Military-Industrial Complex to Permanent War
War Resisters League Pie Chart
Contents of #3
Costs Per Taxpayer
$One Trillion President Obama? How About $4 Trillion?
Medea Benjamin: Costs of Endless Wars
Leaving Afghanistan
Senator Tester: Reduce Military Budget
Congressional Progressive Caucus Budget
Costs To Taxpayers
The US Taiwan
While the U.S. U.S. U.S.
$1 trillion in cuts would still leave the Pentagon fatter than it was before 9/11, Time notes.
“Cost of War $3.7 Trillion and Counting, 258,000 Dead”
Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq , Afghanistan and Pakistan
The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project "Costs of War" by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies (http://www.costsofwar.org/).
In the 10 years since US troops went into Afghanistan
Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs such as long-term obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020. The estimates do not include at least $1 trillion more in interest payments coming due and many billions more in expenses that cannot be counted, according to the study.
The White House says the total amount appropriated for war-related activities of the Department of Defense, intelligence and State Department since 2001 is about $1.3 trillion, and that would rise to nearly $1.4 trillion in 2012.
Researchers with the Watson Institute say that type of accounting is common but too narrow to measure the real costs.
In human terms, 224,000 to 258,000 people have died directly from warfare, including 125,000 civilians in Iraq Connecticut and Kentucky
"Costs of War" brought together more than 20 academics to uncover the expense of war in lives and dollars, a daunting task given the inconsistent recording of lives lost and what the report called opaque and sloppy accounting by the US Congress and the Pentagon.
The report underlines the extent to which war will continue to stretch the US
It also raises the question of what the United States
"I hope that when we look back, whenever this ends, something very good has come out of it," Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee , told Reuters in Washington
September 11, 2001: The Damage Continues
In one sense, the report measures the cost of 9/11, the American shorthand for the events of September 11, 2001. Nineteen hijackers plus other al Qaeda plotters spent an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 on the plane attacks that killed 2,995 people and caused $50 billion to $100 billion in economic damages.
What followed were three wars in which $50 billion amounts to a rounding error. For every person killed on September 11, another 73 have been killed since.
Was it worth it? That is a question many people want answered, said Catherine Lutz, head of the anthropology department at Brown and co-director of the study.
"We decided we needed to do this kind of rigorous assessment of what it cost to make those choices to go to war," she said. "Politicians, we assumed, were not going to do that kind of assessment."
The report arrives as Congress debates how to cut a US
What did the United States
Strategically, the results for the United States Iraq and Afghanistan Afghanistan
"The United States
"Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was capable of mounting very sophisticated, complex, operations on an intercontinental basis. That organization with that capability has not only been substantially reduced, it seems to have been shattered," Friedman said.
Economically, the results are also mixed. War spending may be adding half a percentage point a year to growth in the gross domestic product but that has been more than offset by the negative effects of deficit spending, the report concludes.
SHORTEN THE FOLLOWING
“Endless War and Empire”
While our fiscal woes have led Congress to slash food aid this year to the world's poor - rest assured, fellow Americans - the US
"Money for bombs, not bread," might be a good bipartisan slogan.
And when it comes to dropping its citizens' tax dollars on flying killer robots and foreign military occupations, no country comes close to the United States
That's more than George W. Bush ever spent. And figures released this week by SIPRI show that since Obama took office, the US
And the actual figure spent on war – the fighting of it, the preparation for it and the consequences of it – is substantially higher than acknowledged, with spending on military programs often buried in places like the Department of Energy, which oversees the US's massive stash of nuclear weapons. Counting those hidden costs, including veterans benefits, aid to foreign militaries and interest payments on defense-related debt, economist Robert Higgs estimates the US
But you wouldn't grasp the enormity of the US
Sounds lovely. But the reality, not the rhetoric, is that Obama and his allies in Congress aren't cutting Pentagon waste and investing in rainbows and unicorns – unless, perhaps, there's some way to harness their power for weapons. Rather, they're investing in war at the cost of community health centers, local development projects and Medicare. In Washington
"We will all need to make sacrifices," Obama reiterated in his speech on the national debt this week - just not the Pentagon, which is guaranteed more money every year under this president's watch. "I will never accept cuts that compromise our ability to defend our homeland or America
And if you're a US taxpayer, forget welfare programs: bombing and occupying countries that pose no credible threat to America - Obama has so far authorized attacks in at least six countries since taking office, including Yemen, Somalia and the latest and greatest $8.3-million-a-day war for peace, Libya - is your single greatest expense as a citizen. Indeed, over half of federal discretionary spending - what Americans will pay for with their incomes taxes on April 18 - goes to the armed forces and their legion of private contractors.
Now imagine what that money could do if it went to something more productive. Imagine if, instead of paying for bombs to be dropped around the world, those tax dollars went toward fulfilling actual human needs - toward creating friends, not enemies.
For the cost of just one minute of war we could build 16 new schools in Afghanistan Iraq and Afghanistan
The obvious wastefulness of war has even some politicians beginning to talk of investing in America
But lawmakers - all of whom have military contractors in their districts - rarely do anything good of their own volition. Rather, they have to be forced into action by those they purport to represent. At the local level, communities are doing just that by pressuring mayors to sign a resolution calling on Congress to redirect military spending to domestic priorities. A similar resolution, spearheaded by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, will be considered at the June meeting of the US Conference of Mayors.
Pressuring politicians is not the only route to affect change, of course. The War Resisters League, for instance, suggests principled civil disobedience: refusing to pay taxes to fund unjust wars. That route is fraught with risk, including the prospect of jail time, but it's one that would have made great Americans like Martin Luther King and Henry David Thoreau proud.
Not everyone can accept those risks, especially for those with families to worry about. But another option, living simply and reducing one's taxable income, has the added benefit of not just starving the warfare state, but curbing one's contribution to mindless consumerism and global climate change. And forgoing a new iPhone is a small price to pay to save a life.
Be it refusing to pay for war or speaking out against the injustice of bombing and killing poor people on the other side of the globe, the important thing is to recognize one's role in the war machine and commit to doing something about it - to quit complacently accepting the world as it is and to work toward making it what it should be. The greatest enabler of the military-industrial complex isn't really taxes: it's apathy.
Medea Benjamin ( medea@globalexchange.org ) is cofounder of Global Exchange (http://www.globalexchange.org/) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace (http://www.codepinkalert.org/). She is author of "Don't Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart."
Charles Davis has covered Congress for NPR and Pacifica stations across the country, and freelanced for the international news wire Inter Press Service, primarily covering US policy toward Latin America and the war on drugs in particular. He has also worked as a researcher for Michael Moore on his movie Capitalism: A Love Story.
NOT LEAVING AFGHANISTAN
[Significant analysis of war in Afghanistan
“Bad News for a Country Tired of War “
By Bill Boyarsky
Barack Obama’s plan for a limited withdrawal from Afghanistan
In his speech Wednesday night, the president announced he will reduce the U.S. fighting force in Afghanistan
Nowhere did he pledge that all the personnel would be brought home by that 2014 date.
Nor did he mention that 68,000 service personnel will remain in Afghanistan Afghanistan
That means that after the pullout more than 86,000 personnel will remain engaged in fighting or the vague “support” duties cited by the president. They will add to the human and economic toll of a war that has killed, according to the website iCasualties, 1,632 American troops and wounded 11,191. The financial cost is now more than $426 billion. With the Iraq War added in, the figure reaches $1.2 trillion.
Although Obama’s speech was no cause for celebration, there were some pluses. The troop reduction was more substantial than the much smaller cuts advocated by outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the military command. Obama said the United States
Obama had a positive but not triumphal tone, saying the United States
Actually, he is starting it from a position of weakness.
Although the war has been pretty much ignored by cable news and much of the rest of the mainstream media, apparently the American people have a different view.
Read More
REDUCE MILITARY SPENDING
Sen. Jon Tester, “End Outdated Military Spending, Not Medicare”
Reader Supported News 5-21-11
Senator Jon Tester begins: "Today, the same politicians in the House of Representatives who claimed that tax cuts for the wealthy would 'pay for themselves' are insisting we take them seriously as they try to balance the budget. Their plan? To end Medicare as we know it, and other gimmicks like cutting basic health care for women."
READ MORE http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/272-39/6016-end-outdated-military-spending-not-medicare
CONGRESSIONAL PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS BUDGET
From War Resisters League: “Yes to the People's Budget! Fund People, Not War! “
Take Action!
This is exciting!
We're in a very important moment. The budget plan for the next 10 years is being discussed and this will have huge implications for us all.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has introduced a courageous and responsible budget plan called the People's Budget. By slashing military spending and taxing the rich, it would reduce the deficit by 4.7 trillion dollars in 10 years,provide resources for a jobs program and much needed infrastructure and protect medicare and social security. (See a great chart by the New Priorities Network comparing the People's Budget with those of Obama & GOP/Paul Ryan. You can also scroll to the bottom to take a one-question poll.)
At the same time, the House of Representatives will soon be voting on the Defense Appropriations Bill giving $530 billion to the Department of Defense and alotting $119 billion to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
1.) Take Action Now by urging your representative to support the CPC's People's Budget and to vote NO on this bill:
2)This is the budget we've been waiting for! Forward this message to your friends and family and post a link to the action on Facebook. Spread the one-question poll far and wide!
3.) 2.) Make a phone call to your representative!
Congressional switchboard 877-762-8762 or 202-224-3121 You can use this simple script:
Please support the Congressional Progressive Caucus' People's Budget & vote against the 2012 Defense Appropriations Bill. We need to change our spending priorities. Help end the wars and bring needed funds back to our communities.
Let's work together to push for a budget that supports peace and economic growth for all!
To join WRL's efforts to change US spending priorities, contact Organizing Coordinator Kimber Heinz at kimber@warresisters.org or call 212-228-0450
END OF COSTS NEWSLETTER #3
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