When a Nobel laureate in economics, who also happens to be a leading professor at Columbia University in New York, speaks, people listen.
Joseph E. Stiglitz and his co-author Linda Bilmes have produced a devastating book that raises serious questions about the war on Iraq. It is a must-read for all those trying to understand this incredibly foolish war.
According to the authors, the American-led invasion of Iraq will cost the United States, at a conservative estimate, $3 trillion, and the rest of the world may end up paying another $3 trillion. These are not small figures, and while they tend to be far higher than anything the Bush administration says it is spending, they deserve careful scrutiny.
Needless to say, Stiglitz and Bilmes believe that the data published and projected by the Bush administration has misled the American taxpayers.
The claim that this war has cost nearly $500 billion during the past five years, the authors insist, obscures true long-term outlays, especially those of indirect nature, ranging from higher medical expenditures to the replacement of lost materials.
They stand the giddy prognostication that the war would cost a mere $50 billion on its head by informing the reader that Washington spends about that much in Iraq every 12 weeks.
Why no worry
Stiglitz and Bilmes painstakingly document why few Americans seem to worry about the long-term consequences of these huge deficits. In this highly readable book, the authors argue that the Bush administration set out into the Iraq adventure dishonestly, even if incompetence may have overtaken their numerous decisions.
Chapter 3 underscores how none of the government’s projections include long-term disability and healthcare for returning veterans, over 50,000 of whom are severely injured. Based on medical testimonies, which are quoted extensively throughout the text, many of these veterans already suffer from “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome”.
How does the US plan to compensate such victims?
An even more devastating question is raised regarding the many disability claims that will be filed by thousands of veterans over the years, since more than 600,000 soldiers and guardsmen have served in Iraq to date. That is almost 40 per cent of all men and women in uniform.
With rising healthcare costs, how will Washington compensate its noble war veterans? And how does one assess the physical strains — even abuses — imposed on these men and women by instituting repeated tours of duty that add significant costs to families left behind? What is the cost to the economy when National Guard soldiers are forced to leave their jobs for over a year?
The best part of the book (chapters 4 and 8) is that which discusses profiteering that it says drives up total costs. When Stiglitz and Bilmes document how the Blackwater company, for example, charges the government more than $1,000 per day for each security guard, one cannot but take notice.
Defence contractors such as Blackwater and Halliburton, which had employed Vice-President Dick Cheney for several years, are making handsome profits. Is this not akin to theft?
Of course, while these two economists focus on the monetary costs of the war to the United States, they realise that the greatest devastation occurred in Iraq itself.
Their financial estimates for the 28 million Iraqis (of whom four million were displaced, two million went into exile and, perhaps, a million were killed) are even worse.
Sadly, no estimates are provided for what the lives of over 500,000 Iraqi children who starved to death under the watchful eye of the United Nations, and whose sacrifice former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright said was “worth it”.
While it is true that these lives were lost before the 2003 US invasion, it is important to factor them in any true evaluation to get a true picture. Moreover, it is also important to add adequate compensation for the Iraqis who have lost their husbands, wives, parents or children, or who are so badly injured that they will require costly medical care for years to come.
These people matter, too, and fair compensation must be allocated for the displaced and those who lost their homes and livelihoods.
Another far more hideous cost is the permanent contamination of Iraqis with Depleted Uranium munitions that accelerate various cancers and birth defects. Who will pay for their care?
The list is long indeed, ranging from Abu Ghraib to neglected asylums, to destroyed property throughout Iraq.
Everyone, starting with the United States, will pay hefty prices because of this war perhaps for decades to come.
Because many American companies goaded the US to embark on such adventures, few realised the long-term consequences on American foreign policy blunders, and the devastating impact that such mistakes would have on the country’s position in the international arena.
To defend way of life
What this critical book does is calculate the considerable blowback effects of neo-imperialism, which is replacing the American genius for youth, vigour and strength, with a decline of goodwill and credibility that past generations painstakingly assembled and contributed to civilisation.
After 9/11, it seems that much of that goodwill was squandered, because the Iraq war was fought to defend a “way of life” (to quote then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld), which was no more than material gains.
The Three Trillion Dollar War is a must read for anyone eager to understand the financial cost of the Iraq conflict. It’s true costs, however, ranging from lost freedoms to a systematic institutionalisation of torture and the adoption of a semi-permanent clash of civilisations, will necessitate utmost vigilance.
Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is the author of “Power and Succession in Arab Monarchies”.
