Washington
has expended a whopping $5.6 trillion on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Syria and Pakistan since 2001, according to a new study. That figure
is more than three times what the Pentagon has claimed in official
estimates.
Research
from the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at
Brown University found that as of late September, the US wars
combined with "additional spending on Homeland Security and
the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs" had totaled
more than $4.3 trillion since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. That number
surged to $5.6 trillion once likely costs were added for fiscal year
2018, along with estimated future spending on veterans.
The
study noted that its figure is drastically different from the $1.52
trillion which the Pentagon claims the wars have cost US taxpayers
between fiscal years 2001 and 2018. That number was given in an
earlier Pentagon report titled 'Estimated Cost to Each Taxpayer for
the Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.'
The
Watson Institute claims to have used a "more comprehensive
estimate" of the global ‘War on Terror,’ citing a total
approximate cost of $23,386 per US taxpayer. "The difference
between this Costs of War Project estimate and other estimates is
that it includes not only Pentagon/Department of Defense military
spending, but other war-related costs, including war-related spending
by the State Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and
Homeland Security," says the report.
The
extra cost considerations include expenses such as providing
long-term medical care for veterans. Such expenditures are important
to include when dealing with the estimated cost of wars, according to
study author Neta Crawford.
"War
costs are more than what we spend in any one year on what’s called
the pointy end of the spear,” she told the Wall Street Journal.
“There are all these other costs behind the spear, and there are
consequences of using it, that we need to include.” Crawford
noted that the US government wasn't trying to be deceptive, but that
its calculations do not include the "real costs" of war.
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