Overall, he said, “we’re easily headed toward $600 billion.” That would top the $536 billion cost of Vietnam in today’s dollars. World War II cost an inflation-adjusted $3.6 trillion.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-16-iraq-costs_x.htm
Why is the Iraq war so expensive? There’s far less action and casualties, and it hasn’t (yet) been nearly as long.
Probably because the soldiers are far better equipped and supplied. And paid, even, since there are no conscripts.
Also we didn’t try to rebuild Vietnam after we hypothetically beat the NVA.
I think even draftees pulled a salary in Vietnam. Well, we do know there’s been billions of dollars in waste here. I’d suspect we’ll have to wait until the new Congress looks into the contractors but prepared to be mortified. That would be a substantial chunk of it. Having Taco Bells in every base can’t be cheap.
i remember reading a few months ago about the “black” cost of the war being very high too. seems we have several new generation satellites in that area of the world now
Yes but those pay for themselves after the first couple clandestine training camp bombings.
One line mentioned the Air Force expenses - our aircraft (and maintainance costs) are quite a bit more expensive today even in today’s dollars. I’d guess the overall equipment the average soldier carries, with all of the electronics, etc. is a lot more expensive than an M-15 and a shirt and a helmet. And I do imagine there’s a lot of money in there that goes to satellite and other “secret” type equipment. It would be interesting to see the breakdown.
vs.
Times one MEEEEEEEELLION.
Not buying it…
follow the money if you can, somebody’s families are going to be rich for several generations.
What, you think that wasn’t happening in megabucks during Vietnam? There were less people watching over shady deals back then than now, by far.
Vietnam also cost 58 thousand American lives, and a shit ton of Vietnamese whose deaths were never counted.
I’m pretty sure I read that the current average worth of the human body is $2 million, so add that to salary, cost of training, future productivity lost as a result of death, etc, and then figure it out.
I betcha that the human body was worth less in the sixties, because we have all sorts of new cool ways to transfer organs and stuff from one person to another, so its possible that Vietnam would lose a lot of ground on that part.
Figuring out the proper metrics would be gruesome, but would really let you get exact about how much soldiers are worth. I mean, people always talk about how the death of a human being is an incalculable loss, but that’s just hyperbole. I’m sure you could figure out the exact cost of a human life if you really worked at it.
The cost of losing a person’s future contribution to the GDP is beside the point Aeon. Right, a lot more people died in the vietnam war, and clearly as a result the true cost was more than the 2nd Iraq War.
However, the cost in taxes looks to soon be higher, despite being a considerably shorter, smaller, and less intense war. Why? I suspect it’s because the level of graft is substantially higher this time around than during the Vietnam war. Ridiculously overpriced gas sold to the army, contracting out cooking and cleaning which used to be done by soldiers, highly padded “reconstruction” contracts, money earmarked for reconstruction that just flat out disappeared, etc.
I’m sure some of the cost increase has gone to equipment, but considering (roughly speaking) that the Vietnam war had greater than 10x the casualties (and thus presumably fighting), greater than 10x the US manpower involved, and lasted for roughly 5x as long, I just don’t buy that’s the primary factor – especially considering the rampant corruption that’s been reported but not seriously investigated, the amount of corruption that’s spilled into public view anyway, the non-competitive contract bids, etc.
There should be a full-on investigation into the finances of the Iraq invasion, and those bilking the US taxpayers out of billions of dollars should be stuck in jail for life.
We never tried to reconstruct Vietnam, there wasn’t the opportunity for shady reconstruction deals. But you’re out of your mind if you think it wouldn’t have occured. Government corruption has steadily declined over the course of human history, precisely because we discover it now.
There is certainly a lot of waste and obviously a great deal of that is intentional and stolen. Civilians taking over many features of the war such as cooking is definitely more of a mixed bag; while there is a lot of wasted luxury there, I have to wonder what sort of perspective you have that you think that anything short of actual combat operations is less expensively done by the military. Were the US Army still running its own chow, its soldiers would likely be eating shit and paying more…most of these turnovers to civilians were done as a result of verifiable, material cost savings (especially with respect to supply and logistics functions for equipment, etc). That was the basis of the contracts being granted in the first place.
I’m sure some of the cost increase has gone to equipment, but considering (roughly speaking) that the Vietnam war had greater than 10x the casualties (and thus presumably fighting), greater than 10x the US manpower involved, and lasted for roughly 5x as long, I just don’t buy that’s the primary factor – especially considering the rampant corruption that’s been reported but not seriously investigated, the amount of corruption that’s spilled into public view anyway, the non-competitive contract bids, etc.
Once again, I don’t think you understand the magnitude of difference between the Vietnam era military and ours. The level of investment in training alone in each serviceman is exponentially greater (although still far from great), and that is the most cost effective proportion that exists in terms of returns and long term savings. The real variable is the technological investment in each sort of unit, hitting stratospheric levels for the air force especially. It is absolutely mindblowing when you consider the full scope of the DOD’s investment in technological assets with questionable returns, as covered in any number of dissenting works that have come out, both in official papers and books for general consumption (such as Thomas X. Hammes’ excellent Sling and the Stone). I’m not talking about medical infrastructure or anything else, but rather investments premised around giving commanders distant from the battlefield the illusion of immediate, accurate intel,s or even more improbable gadgets and vehicles for war with a nonexistent foe, a Soviet Union 2020. That most certainly constitutes waste in a literal sense, although probably not outright graft.
There should be a full-on investigation into the finances of the Iraq invasion, and those bilking the US taxpayers out of billions of dollars should be stuck in jail for life.
I don’t think many disagree with you…why this isn’t on the table in the Senate already I can’t imagine.
Is there a way of measuring the degree of randomness in a non sequiter? If not, you should come up with one. The only part of the "human cost’ that is at all relevant to the figure above is the literal cost of sustaining servicemen’s lives and the 400k death reparation, not some abstract potential cost.