The military are raising the alarm about the monetary cost of the Afghan War. The following was published on April 7, 2004, before Canada became so deeply embroiled in its present Afghan combat role.
When it comes to war, there are other costs, besides financial.
THE COST OF WAR : DEGRADING THE HUMAN SPIRIT
Wars almost always cost more than the "experts" predict, whether in human terms, or in treasure. A man who knew a lot about war – the late U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower – put it this way: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."
The Great War of 1914 was expected to be short and cheap. It ended up lasting more than four years and cost the lives of nine million; more than 20 million were maimed.
The cost of the Vietnam War was kept secret for a long time by the American leadership; and the final figures aren’t in yet. The bottom line for Vietnam is likely incalculable. But it’s sure to be in the hundreds of billions. Tens of thousands died, many more were wounded, and it destroyed the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. The social cost of that war is still felt today by the United States. It is even infecting this year’s presidential contest, giving rise to bitterness and calumny.
In an extraordinary statement, an official of the Bush campaign commented recently on the Democratic contender John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran. In a recent Washington Post article, Terry Holt said, "John Kerry’s campaign seems to be summed up this way: I went to Vietnam, yadda, yadda, yadda, I want to be president." It was an insensitive remark that is proving to be divisive.
The high-tech 1991 Persian Gulf War seemed, by 20th-century standards, cheap. The direct cost is put at $76 billion and loss of allied military personnel is said to have been only about 150. But in the final analysis that war was neither easy nor cheap. Over 200,000 veterans have filed for compensation and treatment for service-related disabilities. The cost in dollars is in the billions. The total cost in human suffering is unknown.
The conflict in Iraq is beginning to remind Americans of that earlier conflict in Vietnam. Commentators are using the word "quagmire."
It is an undeclared war and is considered by many governments to be illegal. It is a so-called "war of choice," entered into by the United States as a defensive, pre-emptive action, in order to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. The absence of such weapons reinforces the opinion of those who contend it is illegal. The failure to find the weapons calls into question the "rightness" of the war and it undermines the authority of the U.S. president in ways that are indeed reminiscent of Vietnam.
Skeptics and critics are punished. Before the invasion, Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic advisor, suggested publicly that the war might cost as much as $200 billion. He was subsequently dismissed from his job. But events have proven him correct. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the amount spent so far on the war is approximately $112 billion, and the final tally could well exceed Lindsey’s original estimate.
In human terms, more than 600 U.S. service personnel have been killed, and injuries to soldiers and civilians are occurring at a much higher rate than in the first Gulf War. There is no accurate accounting of the number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed but estimates put that number at between 8,000 and 11,000.Casualities, including military could be as high as 20,000.
The war has, of course, turned into an occupation and there is a need to pay attention to trauma-related personnel issues including suicides. These result from the soldiers’ first-hand experience of civilian suffering, and from seeing their buddies killed and wounded. It can have a long-term negative effect on their lives and their families after combat.
Many Americans are dismayed to see that corruption and crime on the part of their people may be present in Iraq just as in all previous wars and occupations. The American vice-president’s former company, Halliburton Corporation, is accused of ripping off the U.S. military. Halliburton recently fired two employees for taking bribes, according to a report by the BBC on March 17 this year. Pentagon auditors are continuing to investigate allegations that Halliburton overcharged the U.S. military for fuel deliveries from Kuwait.
As for the war’s effect on domestic politics, no one yet knows whether it will ultimately destroy the presidency of George W. Bush. But there is talk.
Throughout history, every military action and occupation, especially where there is significant resistance, has produced its share of criminality. Army commanders have made heroic efforts to control their soldiers and prohibit criminal behaviour, but not always with success.
The power and control enjoyed by military officials, and even individual soldiers, over those under occupation tends to breed contempt for civil procedure and for civilized behaviour. Those who live under occupation are resentful and bitter and the occupier is viewed as a tyrant to be resisted in whatever way possible.
War by its very nature produces massive destruction – both material and human. The circumstances of war make fertile ground for prostitution. Almost always there is wanton killing and assassination; illegal gambling, smuggling, fraud, profiteering and other types of criminality abound. The longer the occupation, the worse it gets.
Along with the crime, goes an inevitable decline in the moral and ethical standards of the warring parties. This goes hand in hand with future economic hardship for those who survive.
And then, of course, there is the War on Terror. Most agree that the Iraq war is not helping that war, but rather is heating it up, making it more dangerous and difficult to fight.
The debate over the "rightness" of the Iraq war is having a corrosive effect on American domestic politics. It has caused the U.S. presidential campaign to fall victim to a kind of politics of brutality. And as Mark Danner says in the latest edition of The New Yorker, the internal discord "leaves a powerful weapon in the hands of the terrorists, who gained enormously after the attacks in Madrid by appearing to swing Spain’s election against a major ally of President Bush."
Before going to war in Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that there are times when you have to make war to achieve peace. He emphasized the evidence of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. He echoed President Bush’s belief that toppling Saddam would make the world a safer place. It may be true in some cases that war is necessary; but increasingly, Americans are seeing the war in Iraq as just the opposite. Powell now says he may have been mistaken in some of his pre-war assertions to the UN Security Council.
The most dramatic horror of this conflict – so far – is the gruesome murder of the four American workers and the mutilation of their bodies by a mob. It is Iraq’s worst-case example yet of how conflict and war can degrade the human spirit to its lowest point.
It leaves us asking sadly, will those lines from Isaiah ever be fulfilled? "…and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks…nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
