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US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4T dollars

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Re: US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4T dollars

#21

Post by save_ferris »

dmarlow wrote: post #3
nibepins wrote: post #2

Summary: - Over 801,000 people have died due to direct war violence, and several times as many indirectly - Over 335,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting - 37 million - the number of war refugees and displaced persons - The US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4 trillion dollars - The US government is conducting counterterror activities in 80 countries - The wars have been acco…

Before each war, leaders should sit down, write down hypothetical outcomes and see if they still feel it makes sense. Then, after the conflict, come back and see how their estimates were. I'm hopeful that people would be more prudent if they could foresee the impact of their decisions.

I agree. One of the problems that arises, however, is that wars get passed down from administration to administration, and once that happens, nobody wants to be the one to pull out and have that on their legacy.

It happened in Vietnam, and it's happening today in the Middle East. In both cases, the government knew early on that "total victory" was not possible, yet administrations kept pressing on. As long as leaders fear the political fallout of such major decisions, they will act in their best interest, even if it costs thousands of young lives.

Re: US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4T dollars

#22

Post by gumby »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #14

I believe the $6.4T doesn't include the >$1T spent domestically on security theater (TSA), NatSec tech used for low level crimes (eg: Fusion Centers) and bulk surveillance of Americans not suspected of a crime.

Yes, this refers only to waging war on foreigners. Waging war on Americans has its own budget.

Re: US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4T dollars

#23

Post by ChomskyNormal4m »

YarickR2 wrote: post #11

So roughly 100 were killed for every american dead in 9/11. Thas's a harsh punishment, US certainly doesn't know what mercy is . Edit: missed by two orders of magnitude. Still, a lot. Also: not a blame, just observations.

The US backed the jihadists (mujahidden) against the secular Saur government in the 1970s and 1980s, so that blew back from that too. Along with the US military opening foreign bases in the Arabian dictatorship a decade before 9/11 (military bases closed two years after 9/11).

Re: US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4T dollars

#26

Post by slezakattack »

pgustafs wrote: post #13

A little arithmetic: 6.4T USD / 128M US households = 50K USD/household 50K USD/household/ 9 years = 5.5K USD/household/yr

That's pretty significant when you see that median household income across the nation ranged from $38,000/yr - $68,000/yr [1]. 5% - 13% of your paycheck going to a war

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

Re: US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4T dollars

#27

Post by [deleted] »

slezakattack wrote: post #26
pgustafs wrote: post #13

A little arithmetic: 6.4T USD / 128M US households = 50K USD/household 50K USD/household/ 9 years = 5.5K USD/household/yr

That's pretty significant when you see that median household income across the nation ranged from $38,000/yr - $68,000/yr [1]. 5% - 13% of your paycheck going to a war [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

[deleted]

Re: US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4T dollars

#28

Post by miles »

"Bush Fired Larry Lindsey for Saying the War Might Cost $100 Billion" https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/bush-fired-larr.html

"On September 15, 2002, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Lindsey estimated the high limit on the cost of the Bush administration's plan in 2002 of invasion and regime change in Iraq to be 1–2% of GNP, or about $100–$200 billion. Mitch Daniels, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, discounted this estimate as 'very, very high' and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated that the costs would be under $50 billion. Rumsfeld called Lindsey's estimate 'baloney'." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_B._Lindsey#Cost_of_th...

Re: US federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $6.4T dollars

#29

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

submeta wrote: post #10

And despite all of the efforts the adversaries haven‘t effectively been taken down, the world is not a more secure place, the reputation of the US has taken damage, in a few years the next IS and taliban are coming, under another name.

Of note is that Sept 11 was an extreme, one-off outlier.

From 1975 to today, the US has been at historically low-levels of domestic terrorism. Five years prior (in 1970), the US reported 400 domestic terror attacks/year [1].

In 1971, the Pentagon Papers leak exposed massive & systemic FBI wrongdoing. Afterward, the agency was reformed and re-tasked into a law enforcement mission (until 2012). By 1975, domestic terrorism had sharply fallen & has remained at that low level since.

[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/11/nine-... [orig data source: Rand Corp]

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