The Three Trillion Dollar War by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Linda J. Bilmes

As the boondoggle in Baghdad grinds into another year of disaster, the price for war in Iraq continues to mount. And yet, while the violence keeps raging, its authors are preparing their exit from the political stage. Before they leave, however, Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes take a final stab at holding the George W. Bush administration to account.

Their alarmingly-titled new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, takes stock of the costs and consequences of US actions in Iraq. Stiglitz and Bilmes offer a particularly trenchant critique of the administration’s mishandling of Iraq, arguing that the enormous debt already accumulated is but the beginning of much larger troubles likely to haunt future generations to come.

Stiglitz and Bilmes set their sights on the White House’s negligent accounting by laying out a simple and straightforward agenda: establish an accurate price tag for the American war on Iraq. Of course, the incalculable costs are easily tallied.

In five years of fighting, the United States has lost over 4,000 young men and women of its armed services. Violence in Iraq has sent another 60,000 American troops home maimed and injured. The ghastly conditions there have left over 100,000 vets with serious mental disorders and rendered hundreds of thousands more in need of psychological counseling. And these figures do not begin to account for the untold numbers of Iraqis killed, injured and displaced by half a decade of brutal chaos.

But following the money, as the authors make clear, is far more difficult. American spending in Iraq has mushroomed to mindboggling heights. Number-crunchers at the Congressional Research Service find that Iraq eats up $4,000 per minute, an appetite that issues a hefty $10.3 billion invoice to the United States at the close of each month. Yet these numbers, Stiglitz and Bilmes contend, obscure the true economic cost. After systematically demonstrating that the accounting practices of the US Defense Department are antiquated, sloppy, and egregiously misleading, Stiglitz and Bilmes set about constructing a ledger for spending that more precisely captures the consequences of the conflict.

In order to gain traction in the muddy terrain of Bush administration war accounts, the authors begin by collecting the various appropriations requested by the President from Congress for the war. Next, they add the war’s hidden budget, concealed within silos vaguely labeled “operational expenditures”. After adjusting for inflation, Stiglitz and Bilmes tack on projected spending estimates for the next four years to the total. They then attach projected costs of disability and health care for returning veterans, before considering the price of restoring the American armed forces to their prewar conditions.

Finally, they add the budgetary responsibilities of war’s aftermath that fall to other arms of the government beyond the Defense Department. In total, they arrive at their book’s title: three trillion dollars.

But they don’t stop there. Since almost the entirety of war monies spent have been on loan, Stiglitz and Bilmes persuasively argue that any true reckoning of Iraq’s cost should include interest accrued. Adding to the pile of bills already assembled, they take stock of interest payments made on existing loans; unpaid interest currently mounting on those loans; and interest that will stem from future loans necessary to finance the war. Once these amounts have been identified, Stiglitz and Bilmes conclude with thumbnail sketches of Iraq’s macroeconomic impact on both the United States and the world. The final bill, if the authors are correct, will arrive on the next President’s desk in excess of five trillion dollars.

Things might have been different had the government directed these huge sums toward public investment:

A trillion dollars could have built 8 million additional housing units, could have hired some 15 million additional public school teachers for one year; could have paid for 120 million children to attend a year of Head Start; or insured 530 million children for health care for one year; or provided 43 million students with four-year scholarships at public universities. Now multiply those numbers by three.

Meanwhile, Iraq remains in heartbreaking disarray, a bleak sinkhole swallowing countless lives. That many of them are American seems not to have fully registered with a largely apathetic and insulated public in the US. As coverage of Iraq migrates further from the front page with each passing day, The Three Trillion Dollar War serves as a cage-rattling reminder that “war is about men and women brutally killing and maiming other men and women. The costs live on long after the last shot has been fired.”

Unfortunately, with the cowardly lions in Congress refusing to get serious about withdrawal, Barack Obama hedging on his initial promise of an immediate departure date, and John McCain licking his lips at the prospect of a century’s more fighting in Iraq, that last shot does not appear close at hand.