Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz arrives before a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill February 3, 2005 in Washington, DC.
The Bush Administration declined to put a price on the Iraq war it promised, per Vice President Dick Cheney, would be a “cakewalk”. But in its planning, it appears that its initial budget projections were in the region of $60 billion. Today, it’s generally accepted that the war has already cost in the region of $1 trillion, although Nobel economics laureuate Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Blimes calculate that the impact on the U.S. economy, when factoring in long-term costs — such as the health care obligations to the tens of thousands of Americans physically and psychologically maimed in the conflict — will eventually reach $3 trillion. While nobody has suggested that America’s economic woes were caused by the war, plainly adding $1 trillion in government spending at the same time as you’re cutting $3 trillion in government revenue (as President Bush did with his tax cuts) isn’t going to win any prizes for fiscal discipline. Moreover, the social cost of having tens of thousands of Americans returning from a traumatic expedition in which their lives have been put on the line for a mission whose achievements remain ambiguous in the minds of many, only to find a grim economic future at home — the unemployment rate for Iraq and Afghanistan vets in 12%, compared with the national average of 9% — risks producing social consequences we can only shudder to think about. Millions of Iraqis and Americans will bear the scars of the Iraq war for many years to come.