The Cost of War is Unsustainable
When the cost of war exacts a high price to pay
November 25, 2006
HOW do you measure cost? In accounting terms, it is a fairly simple exercise. There is a column on the spreadsheet or ledger for it to be lodged. Mark it down, then weigh it up against the benefits. But how do you measure cost when the business is terror and war, for then something immeasurable enters the equation: that something is life.
It is a saddening fact of the 21st century that one of the major growth industries for governments and business is terror avoidance and terror suppression. As the scale, frequency and seeming random nature of attacks against people have grown, so too the response. To fight against this extracts a cost and, as The Age reports today, it is enormous.
September 11, 2001, not only convulsed society's emotional fabric, it set in train a relentless excavation from the public purse of money to finance the defence of similar attacks and the pursuit of those responsible or others who hold like ambitions. In Australia from 9/11 to now, then projected to 2011, the Federal Government, the states and territories and the private sector have spent, or are committed to spend, about $20 billion in safeguarding this country and its people. The money is marked for aviation security, upgrading of intelligence gathering and analysis, counter-terrorism, border protection, regional security co-operation, and security surrounding events such as this year's Commonwealth Games. As well, there has been the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The war in Iraq has cost $1.6 billion, plus another $300 million for troop deployment next year. Afghanistan has cost $863 million, with another $300 million expected to be needed annually as long as the troops stay there. In 2003, Prime Minister John Howard said he had committed troops to Iraq because "it's right, it's lawful and it's in Australia's national interest. We are determined to join other countries to deprive Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction." Since the reason for the invasion has been found to be a lie, what then does that make this Government's use of taxpayers' money?
It is not clear whether Iraq had any role in 9/11, yet the result has been the sickening mess the world is seeing of a country on the verge of disintegrating. The worst carnage seen in the country since the war began occurred on Thursday, with more than 150 people killed. A UN report released this week says 3709 Iraqis died in October. Fatalities in Baghdad are double what they were a year ago.
This weekend US President George Bush is celebrating Thanksgiving at Camp David. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be there to discuss Mr Bush's meeting next week with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. It is unlikely Mr Bush will put anything of substance to the Prime Minister, given that soon he will be in receipt of several reports, including one from a bipartisan group led by James Baker and another by the Pentagon, on which strategy America should adopt towards Iraq. Politically, Mr Bush has a lot riding on which direction he takes his country. America is spending about $US10 billion ($A13 billion) a month in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Congressional Research Service has estimated that since 9/11 almost $US450 billion has been spent on Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan and the war on terror), Operation Noble Eagle (upgraded security at military bases), and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The cost in today's terms is greater than the cost of America's prosecution of the Vietnam War. Even for a country of America's wealth, this is unsustainable.
The cost in human life is another matter. America lost almost 60,000 lives in the Vietnam War; Australia 500. The civilian toll has been estimated at between 1 million and 2 million. In Iraq, the toll is a fraction of that.
Tomorrow the US will have been involved in Iraq longer than in World War II. Australia is there too, lucky in its escape of war deaths, yet funding an expedition in a country that descends every day into a morass. It will be a dispiriting and ignoble point in our history that the moral imperative and the monetary cost are seen to mean the same thing in justifying our actions.
To read the original article in The Age, click on:
The Age
November 25, 2006
HOW do you measure cost? In accounting terms, it is a fairly simple exercise. There is a column on the spreadsheet or ledger for it to be lodged. Mark it down, then weigh it up against the benefits. But how do you measure cost when the business is terror and war, for then something immeasurable enters the equation: that something is life.
It is a saddening fact of the 21st century that one of the major growth industries for governments and business is terror avoidance and terror suppression. As the scale, frequency and seeming random nature of attacks against people have grown, so too the response. To fight against this extracts a cost and, as The Age reports today, it is enormous.
September 11, 2001, not only convulsed society's emotional fabric, it set in train a relentless excavation from the public purse of money to finance the defence of similar attacks and the pursuit of those responsible or others who hold like ambitions. In Australia from 9/11 to now, then projected to 2011, the Federal Government, the states and territories and the private sector have spent, or are committed to spend, about $20 billion in safeguarding this country and its people. The money is marked for aviation security, upgrading of intelligence gathering and analysis, counter-terrorism, border protection, regional security co-operation, and security surrounding events such as this year's Commonwealth Games. As well, there has been the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The war in Iraq has cost $1.6 billion, plus another $300 million for troop deployment next year. Afghanistan has cost $863 million, with another $300 million expected to be needed annually as long as the troops stay there. In 2003, Prime Minister John Howard said he had committed troops to Iraq because "it's right, it's lawful and it's in Australia's national interest. We are determined to join other countries to deprive Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction." Since the reason for the invasion has been found to be a lie, what then does that make this Government's use of taxpayers' money?
It is not clear whether Iraq had any role in 9/11, yet the result has been the sickening mess the world is seeing of a country on the verge of disintegrating. The worst carnage seen in the country since the war began occurred on Thursday, with more than 150 people killed. A UN report released this week says 3709 Iraqis died in October. Fatalities in Baghdad are double what they were a year ago.
This weekend US President George Bush is celebrating Thanksgiving at Camp David. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be there to discuss Mr Bush's meeting next week with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. It is unlikely Mr Bush will put anything of substance to the Prime Minister, given that soon he will be in receipt of several reports, including one from a bipartisan group led by James Baker and another by the Pentagon, on which strategy America should adopt towards Iraq. Politically, Mr Bush has a lot riding on which direction he takes his country. America is spending about $US10 billion ($A13 billion) a month in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Congressional Research Service has estimated that since 9/11 almost $US450 billion has been spent on Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan and the war on terror), Operation Noble Eagle (upgraded security at military bases), and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The cost in today's terms is greater than the cost of America's prosecution of the Vietnam War. Even for a country of America's wealth, this is unsustainable.
The cost in human life is another matter. America lost almost 60,000 lives in the Vietnam War; Australia 500. The civilian toll has been estimated at between 1 million and 2 million. In Iraq, the toll is a fraction of that.
Tomorrow the US will have been involved in Iraq longer than in World War II. Australia is there too, lucky in its escape of war deaths, yet funding an expedition in a country that descends every day into a morass. It will be a dispiriting and ignoble point in our history that the moral imperative and the monetary cost are seen to mean the same thing in justifying our actions.
To read the original article in The Age, click on:
The Age
posted by Pax Christi @ Saturday, November 25, 2006
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