Have We Committed $4 Trillion to The 'War on terror' and What Has Been Accomplished?

"Osama bin Laden and his henchmen probably spent the pittance of just $500,000 on organising the September 2001 attacks, which killed 3,000 people and directly cost the US economy an estimated $50bn to $100bn. In 2003, President George W Bush proclaimed that the Iraq war would cost $50bn to $60bn. Governments that go to war invariably underestimate the cost – but rarely on such an epic scale."


'War on terror' set to surpass cost of Second World War
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Independent

The total cost to America of its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the related military operations in Pakistan, is set to exceed $4 trillion – more than three times the sum so far authorised by Congress in the decade since the 9/11 attacks.

This staggering sum emerges from a new study by academics at the Ivy-league Brown University that reveals the $1.3 trillion officially appropriated on Capitol Hill is the tip of a spending iceberg. If other Pentagon outlays, interest payments on money borrowed to finance the wars, and the $400bn estimated to have been spent on the domestic "war on terror", the total cost is already somewhere between $2.3 and $2.7 trillion.

And even though the wars are now winding down, add in future military spending and above all the cost of looking after veterans, disabled and otherwise and the total bill will be somewhere between $3.7 trillion and $4.4 trillion.

The report by Brown's Watson Institute for International Studies is not the first time such astronomical figures have been cited; a 2008 study co-authored by the Harvard economist Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, a former Nobel economics laureate, reckoned the wars would end up costing over $3 trillion. The difference is that America's financial position has worsened considerably in the meantime, with a brutal recession and a federal budget deficit running at some $1.5 trillion annually, while healthcare and social security spending is set to soar as the population ages and the baby boomer generation enters retirement.

Unlike most of America's previous conflicts moreover, Iraq and Afghanistan have been financed almost entirely by borrowed money that sooner or later must be repaid.

The human misery is commensurate. The report concludes that in all, between 225,000 and 258,000 people have died as a result of the wars. Of that total, US soldiers killed on the battlefield represent a small fraction, some 6,100. The civilian death toll in Iraq is put at 125,000 (rather less than some other estimates) and at up to 14,000 in Afghanistan. For Pakistan, no reliable calculation can be made.

Even these figures however only scratch the surface of the suffering, in terms of people injured and maimed, or those who have died from malnutrition or lack of treatment. "When the fighting stops, the indirect dying continues," Neta Crawford, a co-director of the Brown study, said. Not least, the wars may have created some 7.8 million refugees, roughly equal to the population of Scotland and Wales.

What America achieved by such outlays is also more than questionable. Two brutal regimes, those of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, have been overturned while al-Qa'ida, the terrorist group that carried out 9/11, by all accounts has been largely destroyed - but in neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is democracy exactly flourishing, while the biggest winner from the Iraq war has been America's arch-foe Iran.

Osama bin Laden and his henchmen probably spent the pittance of just $500,000 on organising the September 2001 attacks, which killed 3,000 people and directly cost the US economy an estimated $50bn to $100bn. In 2003, President George W Bush proclaimed that the Iraq war would cost $50bn to $60bn. Governments that go to war invariably underestimate the cost – but rarely on such an epic scale.

If the Brown study is correct, the wars that flowed from 9/11 will not only have been the longest in US history. At $4 trillion and counting, their combined cost is approaching that of the Second World War, put at some $4.1 trillion in today's prices by the Congressional Budget Office.

The Cancer is Back

Metastasis (Greek: change of the state, plural: metastases), sometimes abbreviated Mets, is the spread of cancer from its primary site to other places in the body (e.g., brain, liver).

Cancer cells can break away from a primary tumor, penetrate into lymphatic and blood vessels, circulate through the bloodstream, and grow in a distant focus (metastasize) in normal tissues elsewhere in the body.

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Sometimes, despite the best efforts of "modern medicine," cancer comes back. Unless every cell is removed or destroyed, the possibility exists for regrowth of the existing cancer or a metastasis elsewhere in the body. Tony Snow and Elizabeth Edwards are two prominent examples of cancer patients whose cancer has traveled through their bodies. So is Pakistan.

The cancer is Islamenoma, commonly known as Islamic Fundamentalism, and left untreated (as it has been in western Pakistan), the prognosis is grim. This report by Bill Roggio (ht: Panama Ed) could be considered the most recent of three major press releases concerning the unwelcome return of a malignancy.

Pakistan's Civil War

Events over the past week highlight the deteriorating situation in the country.

Over the past week, the Taliban have been very active in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. The Taliban attacked the town of Tank, re initiated its turf war with the Uzbeks in Waziristan and continues to consolidate gains in Kohat and Bannu. But perhaps most disturbing event isn't the slow disintegration of the Pakistani state at the fringes, but the open defiance from the Taliban in the heart of Pakistani capital. At the peripheries, Pakistan is either engaged in a full scale civil war or is abandoning territory. At the core in Islamabad, the Islamist see real weakness in the Musharraf regime, and is growing bolder each day.

The Talibanization of Islamabad & the Las Masjid

The recent developments in Islamabad prove the Taliban and al Qaeda are not satisfied with remaining confined to the tribal belt or even the Northwest Frontier province and Baluchistan. The pro-Taliban leaders of the Las Masjid have become emboldened by the weakness of the Musharraf government of late, and are now openly challenging the rule of law in the very heart of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.

Zaffar Abbas, in an article titled "The creeping coup," explains how two brothers, Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, run a pro-Taliban movement in and around Islamabad. Aziz "heads Islamabad’s biggest Jamia Fareedia madrassa" which "at any time... boasts over 7,000 students seeking higher degrees in Islamic education.""

Lal Masjid and its adjacent Hafsa madrassa have not only managed to enforce the Taliban-style system of ‘moral policing’ in matters of ‘vice and virtue’, to date they remain in control of the situation" in Islamabad, notes Mr. Abbas. Bands of burka-clad women wielding batons patrol the streets enforcing Sharia, just as Saudi Arabia's notorious 'Department for Virtue and Vice,' or the religious police, do. "Within no time [after becoming emboldened by government weakness over the past few months] groups of men and women from the brigade started visiting shops, threatening them with dire consequences if they didn’t stop selling DVDs, CDs or music cassettes," reports Mr. Abbas. "People were also issued directives about dress codes and other ‘moral and ethical’ issues."

The initial surgery in Afghanistan was not entirely successful and the Taliban cancer is now threatening to kill Pakistan which has been in a weakened condition for quite some time anyway. In October, I wrote:

Musharraf's on borrowed time. He knows it and with his book sales, has been feathering his nest in anticipation of his future endeavers. His value to the west has been as an ally against Islamists in Pakistan and his days of playing it down the middle between Bush and the Taliban are numbered. Both sides are becoming impatient.

It will be better when Musharraf is gone. Perhaps, then an aggressive treatment program can begin in earnest.

Step by stumbling step,
we wind our way through the darkness,
learning as we go.

Guantanamo Detainees Deserve their Day in Civil Court

Move over John Kerry. Whit is joining you in the "flip-floppers hall of shame."

Yes, that's right, it confession time. This one is about the Guantanamo detainees. Previously, I thought it would be better to let the military hold them as prisoners of war subject to military tribunals. I thought that granting the enemy combatants the rights and privileges afforded by the US Constituion especially access to US civil courts would be a gross mistake. I hate to report that like John Kerry and countless other Democrats, I have changed my mind. I now think the Guantanamo detainees should be given their day in court.

But, I would add one proviso. An Independent Special Prosecutor such as Mr. Patrick Fitzgerald should be appointed to investigate and prosecute not only the alleged crimes, but any possible "crimes" which arise out of the course of the investigation.

I have come to this new opinion after carefully considering that Scooter Libby is facing a possible 35-year sentence after being convicted for obstructing a federal investigation. I believe that a 35-year sentence for "lying under oath" is probably harsher and more severe than the "terror related" sentences which would be imposed on the "battle field combatants" currently detained in Guantanamo and about to face Military Tribunals in Cuba. Based on his successful track record, I would like to see Mr. Fitzgerald personally conduct the investigations and subsequent prosecutions.

Forget about obtaining the "terror convictions, let Mr. Fitzgerald go for the really serious charges like lying to a Federal Prosecutor, which given the propensity of the Detainees and their lawyers should be a "cake walk."

Oh, one more piece of advice. For the jury trial, stay away from all the blue states especially those along the East and West coasts.