As the war in Iraq enters its sixth year, its unrelenting criticism only increases in volume as new voices stand out in what has become a Greek chorus of indignations lambasting the never-ending venture. The critique of the war provided by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in their new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, is much more soberly written than the average attack on the Bush administration’s policy: It puts the war into an economic perspective by calculating the bevy of opportunity costs and expenditures arising from the war, and concludes with a normative assessment of how wars can be more economically efficient in the future. Replete with unsubstantiated pontifications while other parts are filled with well-articulated arguments, War falls somewhere between a college student slapping a “Make Peace, Not War” sticker onto his laptop and Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to Castle Church.
How do Stiglitz and Bilmes calculate such alarming costs? Well, War is the end result of an extensive economic study that sifted through skewed statistics manufactured by government bureaucracy in an attempt to find every party that has been hurt financially by the meddling in Iraq. The book expands upon the “upfront” costs of the war, or those calculated by the government, which are currently logged at around $800 billion (the initial cost projection was $200 billion). War considers a “realistic-moderate” scenario in order to do this, in which the war lasts until 2011. Costs factored into this equation include “reset” value, or the $250-375 billion needed to rebuild the armed forces, $20 million for demobilization, the $500 billion increase in the defense budget and $1.6 trillion in oil losses since the price of a barrel of oil has increased by $75 since the beginning of the war. What is especially shocking is that the $3 trillion estimate only includes costs to the American economy resulting from the war.
Social costs are extensively probed in War, and the authors estimate that $500,000 in productivity is lost with every American casualty in Iraq. The Gulf War, which “only lasted a few weeks,” resulted in $4.3 billion in compensation for soldiers, and the authors estimate that social costs of the Iraq war will range from $300 to 400 billion. Of the 1.6 million troops currently deployed in Iraq, one-third will suffer from severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and will be permanently incapable of functioning normally. 31 percent of veterans have filed health claims and 99 percent have a worse health status than would have been expected of their age bracket.
War also dispels many common myths regarding the legitimacy of the Iraq war. It argues that if the invasion of Iraq was an attempt to usurp oil, then it has failed miserably since higher oil prices have had adverse effects on oil-importing countries, such as the US, which have experienced larger trade deficits and inflationary pressures. The common argument that war is good for the economy is null and void, since “money spent on armaments is money poured down the drain.” Stiglitz and Bilmes contend that the war has heavily damaged Iraq, with 1.6 million Iraqis uprooted from their homes and about 40,000 civilian casualties. In addition, cholera has become a devastating epidemic, Iraq was recently ranked 178 out of 180 countries in terms of corruption and 78 percent of Iraqis oppose the US presence.
But War is not just an intellectual “pecking party,” as Ken Kesey would say. Fortunately it fails to fall into the Paul Krugman category of ad hominem attacks and juvenile meandering. It provides a long list of advice and parameters for future wars that are logical and well thought-out. It confesses that Iraq is not entirely a US mea culpa: One of the primary responsibilities of the United Nations is to enforce a checks and balances system for going to war, and it has been utterly ineffective for the past six years. Stiglitz and Bilmes also call for increased transparency and better communication regarding the “estimated human and financial cost” of a war “venture,” which can be strengthened through an improved Freedom of Information Act and a better checks and balances system with Congress. War should not be funded entirely by “emergency supplementals,” but should rather be paid upfront through tax reforms and government spending. The National Guard and Reserves should not be deployed in a conflict zone for more than a year, since this leads to a precarious and defenseless homeland security situation. There should be less reliance on the private sector, such as the security firm Blackwater and contractors, which tends to increase the costs of war.
All things considered, War reads much like a typical front page New York Times article on the Iraq war that has been extended by 200 pages. It provides cutting economic analysis of the war costs, but tends to go off on tangents regarding US foreign policy that seem to consider the Middle East a vacuum in which Iraq and Afghanistan are the only major issues. War is at its best when it is analyzing the nitty-gritty of war costs, and its credibility is only diluted by these opinionated diatribes. It completely ignores the terrible humanitarian state of Iraq prior to the US invasion under the oppressive and violent rule of Saddam Hussein and his Ba’ath party, and because of this almost seems to be a testament to this regime. Although it is repetitive and opinionated, it certainly substantiates and elaborates on its central claim that “there is no free lunch, and there are no free wars.” War is a quick, clean read—the exact opposite of the Iraq war.