NYT/Kristof: Iraq and Your Wallet
kuac...@yahoo.com
October 24, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Iraq and Your Wallet
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
For every additional second we stay in Iraq, we taxpayers will end up
paying an additional $6,300.
So aside from the rising body counts and all the other good reasons to
adopt a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, here's another: We are
spending vast sums there that would be better spent rescuing the
American health care system, developing alternative forms of energy and
making a serious effort to reduce global poverty.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, Donald Rumsfeld estimated that the
overall cost would be under $50 billion. Paul Wolfowitz argued that
Iraq could use its oil to "finance its own reconstruction."
But now several careful studies have attempted to tote up various
costs, and they suggest that the tab will be more than $1 trillion --
perhaps more than $2 trillion. The higher sum would amount to $6,600
per American man, woman and child.
"The total costs of the war, including the budgetary, social and
macroeconomic costs, are likely to exceed $2 trillion," Joseph
Stiglitz, the Nobel-winning economist at Columbia, writes in an updated
new study with Linda Bilmes, a public finance specialist at Harvard.
Their report has just appeared in the Milken Institute Review, as an
update on a paper presented earlier this year.
Just to put that $2 trillion in perspective, it is four times the
additional cost needed to provide health insurance for all uninsured
Americans for the next decade. It is 1,600 times Mr. Bush's financing
for his vaunted hydrogen energy project.
Another study, by two economists at the American Enterprise Institute,
used somewhat different assumptions and came up with a lower figure --
about $1 trillion. Those economists set up a nifty Web site,
www.aei-brookings.org/iraqcosts, where you can tinker with the
underlying assumptions and come up with your own personal estimates.
Of course, many of the costs are hidden and haven't even been spent
yet. For example, more than 3,000 American veterans have suffered
severe head injuries in Iraq, and the U.S. government will have to pay
for round-the-clock care for many of them for decades. The cost ranges
from $600,000 to $5 million per person.
Then there are disability payments that will continue for a
half-century. Among veterans of the first gulf war -- in which ground
combat lasted only 100 hours -- 40 percent ended up receiving
disability payments, still costing us $2 billion each year. We don't
know how many of today's veterans will claim such benefits, but in
the first quarter of this year more people sought care through the
Department of Veterans Affairs than the Bush administration had
budgeted for the entire year.
The war has also forced the military to offer re-enlistment bonuses
that in exceptional circumstances reach $150,000. Likewise, tanks,
helicopters and other battlefield equipment will have to be replaced
early, since the Pentagon says they are being worn out at up to six
times the peacetime rate.
The administration didn't raise taxes to pay for the war, so we're
financing it by borrowing from China and other countries. Those
borrowing costs are estimated to range from $264 billion to $308
billion in interest.
Then there are economic costs to the nation as a whole. For example,
the price of oil was in the $20- to $30-a-barrel range early in this
decade but has now shot up to more than $50, partly because of the drop
in Iraq's oil exports and partly because of war-related instability
in the Middle East. Professors Stiglitz and Bilmes note that if just
$10 of the increase is attributable to the war, that amounts to a $450
billion drag on the economy over six years.
The bottom line is that not only have we squandered 2,800 American
lives and considerable American prestige in Iraq, but we're also
paying $18,000 per household to do so.
We still face the choice of whether to remain in Iraq indefinitely or
to impose a timetable and withdraw U.S. troops. These studies suggest
that every additional year we keep our troops in Iraq will add $200
billion to our tax bills.
My vote would be to spend a chunk of that sum instead fighting malaria,
AIDS and maternal mortality, bolstering American schools, and assuring
health care for all Americans. We're spending $380,000 for every
extra minute we stay in Iraq, and we can find better ways to spend that
money.