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Tag: underestimated

Rick Perry, Undefeated

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has some Democratic strategists gleefully looking forward to running against a hard-right Tea Party Republican who has toyed with secession and looks an awful lot like George W. Bush. But his record of leaving opponents in the dust is well documented:

Since 1984, the man once derided as “Governor Good Hair” has participated in ten contested elections and won all of them. A few were against relatively weak opposition, but many were against prominent figures who were expected to give Perry a run for his money. Jim Hightower, John Sharp, Tony Sanchez, Chris Bell, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Bill White—you could competently govern a medium-sized republic with political talent like that. But all of them fell to Perry’s deep coffers, disciplined campaign style, occasional refusal to debate, and (semi-) popularity among Texans.

Texas political scientists I spoke to when I wrote about Perry’s candidacy in waiting last month said the same thing: Perry is consistently underestimated, and often clobbers his initially-favored opponents.

Four Trillion for War—and Rising

Anyone paying attention to the costs of U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan must have known that the president badly underestimated those numbers on June 22, when he told the nation that we have spent “a trillion dollars” waging war over the past decade. For well over two years, we have known that the total monetary cost of those wars will eventually amount to well over $2 trillion, and might well rise higher, according to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and his associate Linda Bilmes.

What we didn’t know until this week is that the expense in constant dollars — leaving aside the horrific price paid by the dead, wounded, displaced and ruined in every country — will likely reach well over $4.4 trillion.

That is the conclusion of a study released by the Eisenhower Research Project, a group of scholars, diplomats and other experts based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. The Eisenhower study doesn’t scant the human damage, which its authors say has been underestimated as badly as the fiscal costs. According to them, “an extremely conservative estimate of the toll in direct war dead and wounded is about 225,000 dead and about 365,000 physically wounded in these wars so far” — including those in Pakistan, which is embroiled in war just as lethally as Afghanistan.

The American military dead in all three countries now total more than 6,000, a figure that does not include another 2,300 in U.S. military contractors; the American wounded, military and civilian, are well over 100,000, which doesn’t include the psychological destruction wreaked on those who served and their families. The most obvious indicator is the exceptionally high suicide rate among the million or more returned veterans.

The Eisenhower study’s authors concede that they cannot readily estimate the full value of the economic and social damage we have sustained as a nation — in lost years of work and wrecked families, as well as huge interest costs on the money borrowed to finance these interventions.

Nor can they fully account for the growth and investment forfeited because such a great proportion of the nation’s resources was squandered on war rather than pressing needs in infrastructure, energy, education and health.

For less than 5 percent of what we have spent on war — to consider one example among many — we could have completed an American high-speed rail system and repaired most of our crumbling infrastructure, too.

Even if the current war could somehow be concluded instantly, however, the moral and fiscal obligations incurred so far will continue for decades. Beyond the mandatory disability payments, medical and psychiatric care, and additional benefits to which our veterans are entitled, we will face the prospect of increasing military budgets to restore the equipment and readiness of the battered Army and National Guard.

And those costs in turn will subtract from the scant dollars left for domestic programs — as President Eisenhower himself observed when he said, “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 are not clothed.”

It is sobering to revisit the question of what war has cost us in this generation at a moment when the debate over the nation’s finances is so furious and yet so often frivolous.

But it is ever more important to remember how we arrived at this dead end, especially as we listen to the braying Republican leaders who refuse to consider any tax increase. Our fiscal woe is the legacy of their policy, waging war at enormous expense, while sharply reducing taxes on the rich. What we live with now is what “conservatism” has wrought.

Joe Conason is editor-in-chief of The National Memo

Iraq and Afghanistan: The $4 Trillion Wars

This post was written by National Memo Editor-in-Chief Joe Conason.

Anyone paying attention to the costs of US military action in Iraq and Afghanistan must have known that the President badly underestimated those numbers on June 22, when he told the nation that we have spent “a trillion dollars” waging war over the past decade. For well over two years we have known that the total monetary cost of those wars will eventually amount to well over $2 trillion, and might well rise higher, according to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and his associate Linda Bilmes.

What we didn’t know until this week is that the expense in constant dollars – leaving aside the horrific price paid by the dead, wounded, displaced and ruined in every country – will likely reach well over $4 trillion.

That is the conclusion of a study released by the Eisenhower Research Project, a group of scholars, diplomats and other experts based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. The Eisenhower study doesn’t scant the human damage, which its authors say has been underestimated as badly as the fiscal costs. According to them, “an extremely conservative estimate of the toll in direct war dead and wounded is about 225,000 dead and about 365,000 physically wounded in these wars so far” – including those in Pakistan, which is embroiled in war just as lethally as Afghanistan.

The American military dead in all three countries now total more than 6000, a figure that does not include another 2300 in US military contractors; the American wounded, military and civilian, are well over 100,000, which doesn’t include the psychological destruction wreaked on those who served and their families. The most obvious indicator is the exceptionally high suicide rate among the million or more returned veterans.

The Eisenhower study’s authors concede that they cannot readily estimate the full value of the economic and social damage we have sustained as a nation – in lost years of work and wrecked families, as well as huge interest costs on the money borrowed to finance these interventions. Nor can they fully account for the growth and investment forfeited because such a great proportion of the nation’s resources was squandered on war rather than pressing needs in infrastructure, energy, education and health. For less than five percent of what we have spent on war – to consider one example among many — we could have completed an American high-speed rail system and repaired most of our crumbling infrastructure, too.

Even if the current war could somehow be concluded instantly, however, the moral and fiscal obligations incurred so far will continue for decades. Beyond the mandatory disability payments, medical and psychiatric care and additional benefits to which our veterans are entitled, we will face the prospect of increasing military budgets to restore the equipment and readiness of the battered Army and National Guard.

And those costs in turn will subtract from the scant dollars left for domestic programs – as Eisenhower himself observed when he said, “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 are not clothed.”

It is sobering to revisit the question of what war has cost us in this generation, at a moment when the debate over the nation’s finances is so furious and yet so often frivolous. But it is ever more important to remember how we arrived at this dead end, especially as we listen to the braying Republican leaders who refuse to consider any tax increase. Our fiscal woe is the legacy of their policy, waging war at enormous expense, while sharply reducing taxes on the rich. What we live with now is what “conservatism” has wrought.

Study: Post 9/11 War Costs to Total $3.7 Trillion, 300,000 Lives

A massive Brown University study put out Wednesday by economists, political scientists, lawyers, and humanitarian professionals projects the ultimate costs of the Bush/Obama wars to exceed $3 trillion when veterans’ long-term health benefits and future military spending on the conflicts is accounted for. The cost in human lives is far larger than most have previously realized, also:

The human toll — in death, injury and displacement — has been underestimated and in some cases undercounted. There are many difficulties in counting those who are killed and wounded in combat, as discussed in the individual reports by Neta Crawford and Catherine Lutz. Thus, an extremely conservative estimate of the toll in direct war dead and wounded is about 225,000 dead and about 365,000 physically wounded in these wars so far.

More than 6,000 U.S. soldiers and 2,300 U.S. contractors have already been killed. The deaths of U.S. allies, including Iraqi and Afghan security forces and other coalition partners total more than 20,000. The numbers of Afghan and Pakistani military and police killed are probably higher than the totals given here.

We calculate that the U.S. federal government has already spent between $2.3 and 2.6 trillion in constant 2011 dollars. This number is greater than the trillion dollars that the President and others say the U.S. has already spent on war since 2001. Our estimate is larger because we include more than the direct Pentagon appropriation for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the larger global war on terror; wars always cost more than what the Pentagon spends for the duration of the combat operation.

But the wars will certainly cost more than has already been spent. Including the amounts that the U.S. is obligated to spend for veterans, and the likely costs of future fighting as well as the social costs that the veterans and their families will pay, we calculate that the wars will cost between $3.7 and 4.4 trillion dollars.

Of course, President Obama thought he was telling us all a tough truth when he threw out the $1 trillion figure in a recent speech on Afghanistan, saying we needed to focus on nation-building here at home. This report makes clear the price tag will be far higher; and this doesn’t even include interest on the huge amount of debt accumulated to finance the conflicts.

The need to refocus our spending on real priorities–and not long-term ideological warfare–is an urgent one. [Costs of War]