Can We Afford It?

Update: U.S. Casualties in the Current Wars

By Michael Munk
Beaver County Peace Links

US military occupation forces in Iraq and Afganistan and attacking forces in Libya under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered 136 combat casualties in the week ending August 23, as the official casualty total rose to 108,261.

The total includes 78,883 casualties since the US invaded Iraq in March, 2003 (Operations "Iraqi Freedom" and "New Dawn"), and 29,378 since the US invaded Afganistan in November, 2001 (Operation "Eduring Freedom").and none reported since it attacked Libya (Operation "Odessy Dawn") in March, 2011.

IRAQ THEATER: US forces suffered two combat casualties in the week ending August 23, as the total rose to 78,883. That includes 35,699 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and 43,184 dead and medically evacuated (as of Aug. 1) from "non-hostile" causes.

AFGANISTAN THEATER: US forces suffered 134 combat casualties in the week ending Aug 23 as the official total rose to 29,378. The total includes 14,821 dead and wounded from "hostile" causes and 14,557 dead and medically evacuated (as of Aug. 1) from "non-hostile" causes.

LIBYA THEATER:Two air force officers in a downed F-15E were rescued with minor injuries which were not listed as casualties, but several Libyans were wounded by US fire in their rescue. Reports indicate US aircraft no longer fly combat missions over Libya, but focus on refeuling, survaillance and offshore missile launches.

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by only reporting regularily the total killed (6,214 – 4,477 in Iraq,1,737 in Afghanistan) but rarely mentioning those wounded in action (45,622–32,175 in Iraq, 13,447 in Afghanistan). They ignore the 56,425 (42,231 in Iraq,14,194 in AfPak as of Aug 1) military casualties injured and ill seriously enough to be medivaced out of theater, even though the 6,214 total dead include 1,316 (953 in Iraq, 363 in Afghanistan) who died from those same "non hostile" causes, including 293 suicides (as of Aug. 1) and at least 18 in Iraq from faulty KBR electrical work.

WIA are usually updated on Tuesday at www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

Non combat casualties are usually reported monthly at http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/castop.htm

True Cost of US Wars Unknown

By Nancy A. Youssef
Beaver County Peace Links via McClatchy Newspapers

The Pentagon says it spends about $9.7 billion per month, but its cryptic accounting system hides the true price tag of the two wars.

Aug 16, 2011 – When congressional cost-cutters meet later this year to decide on trimming the federal budget, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could represent juicy targets. But how much do the wars actually cost the US taxpayer?

Nobody really knows.

Yes, Congress has allotted $1.3 trillion for war spending through fiscal year 2011 just to the Defense Department. There are long Pentagon spreadsheets that outline how much of that was spent on personnel, transportation, fuel and other costs. In a recent speech, President Barack Obama assigned the wars a $1 trillion price tag.

But all those numbers are incomplete. Besides what Congress appropriated, the Pentagon spent an additional unknown amount from its $5.2 trillion base budget over that same period. According to a recent Brown University study, the wars and their ripple effects have cost the United States $3.7 trillion, or more than $12,000 per American.

Lawmakers remain sharply divided over the wisdom of slashing the military budget, even with the United States winding down two long conflicts, but there’s also a more fundamental problem: It’s almost impossible to pin down just what the US military spends on war.

To be sure, the costs are staggering.

According to Defense Department figures, by the end of April the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – including everything from personnel and equipment to training Iraqi and Afghan security forces and deploying intelligence-gathering drones – had cost an average of $9.7 billion a month, with roughly two-thirds going to Afghanistan. That total is roughly the entire annual budget for the Environmental Protection Agency.

To compare, it would take the State Department – with its annual budget of $27.4 billion – more than four months to spend that amount. NASA could have launched its final shuttle mission in July, which cost $1.5 billion, six times for what the Pentagon is allotted to spend each month in those two wars.

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Get Ready to Rumble for Jobs,

Not War and More Weapons

By Judith Le Blanc
Beaver County Peace Links via CommonDreams.org

Something is missing in the swirl of news reporting on the debt ceiling deal struck on August 2 by the Congress and the President for close to $1 trillion in cuts in discretionary programs over the next decade.

Will the 56% of discretionary spending that goes to the Pentagon take a hit in the name of deficit reduction?

The short answer is not necessarily, not unless we are ready to rumble.

Even the Senate Armed Services Committee leaders Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain have no idea what the deal does to the Pentagon budget.

The cruel irony is the debt ceiling deal exempts spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, even though war costs are one of the biggest factors driving up the national debt by over a trillion dollars.

Caps have been set for ‘security and non security’ spending. The cuts will follow. The security category lumps together the Pentagon with the State Department, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security and nuclear weapons systems.

Right now cuts to the Pentagon budget are not guaranteed. It is threat. Without a grassroots rumble the ax won’t fall on the Pentagon or weapons of mass destruction, it will land on veteran’s benefits or diplomatic efforts.

It’s a fight, not a discussion.

The military budget has doubled in the last 13 years. Up until now there has been a bottomless till for weapons and wars. Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of Defense under President Reagan, says, "in real or inflation adjusted dollars it is higher than at any time since World War II, including the Korean and Vietnam wars and the height of the Reagan buildup."

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Living on the Edge

Washington’s Wars and Occupations:

Month in Review #75 July 29, 2011

By Nathan Paulsen
Beaver County Peace Links via War Times/Tiempo de Guerras

To supply an army at great distance is to impoverish one’s people… All your strength is spent on the battlefield and the families on the home front are left destitute. -Sun Tzu, The Art of Warfare

During some lively conversation on another sweltering evening in Minneapolis, I was introduced to the concept of the “edge” as a place of unusual creativity in the ecological world. The edge of bioregions, climate zones, and landscapes is the site of the most productive ecological action and a focus for sustainable agriculturalists. Whether it is where a forest meets a prairie, or sloping hills meet the plain, borders are where life in all its splendid diversity tends to congregate, exchange energy, and surprise us with new forms and relationships.

Turn now to the social realm where masses of humanity live on the margins of the dominant order. In the shadow of K Street, corporate fiefdoms and an ascendant Right we suffer intimately the full cost of militarism, empire and all their related pathologies. On the edge of survival – emotional as well as physical – we are just removed enough from the everyday trappings of the colonizing culture(s) that we might develop a critical consciousness capable of imagining alternative worlds. In other words, borders in the political economic landscape are no less a place of uncertainty and creativity than they are in the biological.

The margins making headlines today can be found in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Western invaders cross borders with an endless stream of soldiers and drones; or in Egypt, where a surging popular movement has toppled a dictatorship. They also are right here on our own doorsteps.

I am thinking of the tens of millions of economically vulnerable citizens who are being cut loose from now-slashed social safety nets; and the millions of poor people and people of color who are afflicted by drug wars and racial profiling.

I refuse to ignore the latest case of domestic violence in the local news. I want to examine the conscience of a country that has sent some of our best men and women to fight overseas but will not lift a finger to care for those who return wounded in body and mind. I insist on attention to tipping points where climate change hurls tornadoes down on trailer parks, prized possessions wash away in relentless floods, droughts consume our food before it goes to harvest, and heat waves kill poor elders isolated in dilapidated apartments.

I feel a need to learn from justice-makers on all continents. Humanity-filled public squares in Africa, Asia and the Middle East where people resist despots and their imperial backers. Social movement/electoral party combinations in South America where left leaning governments search for new paths. Strikes and rebellions in Europe where hundreds of thousands fight for dignity and against austerity.

Below are a few of the multitude of stories that could be told this month. They illustrate the slow unraveling of the dominant order on the edge where policy meets ordinary people, war plans are upended and novel social structures arise from the struggle for life. 

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Cost of War at Least $3.7 Trillion and Counting

By Daniel Trotta
Beaver County Peace Links via Reuters

NEW YORK, June 29, 2011 – When President Barack Obama cited cost as a reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan, he referred to a $1 trillion price tag for America’s wars.

Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project "Costs of War" by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. (www.costsofwar.org)

In the 10 years since U.S. troops went into Afghanistan to root out the al Qaeda leaders behind the September 11, 2001, attacks, spending on the conflicts totaled $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion.

Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs such as long-term obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020. The estimates do not include at least $1 trillion more in interest payments coming due and many billions more in expenses that cannot be counted, according to the study.

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Our Billboard on Ohio River Blvd near Northern Lights

Five Eye-Opening Facts

About Our Bloated

Post-9/11 ‘Defense’ Spending

By Joshua Holland
Beaver County Peace Links via AlterNet

May 28, 2011 – This week, the National Priorities Project (NPP) released a snapshot of U.S. “defense” spending since September 11, 2001. The eye-popping figures lend credence to the theory that al Qaeda’s attacks were a form of economic warfare – that they hoped for a massive overreaction that would entangle us in costly foreign wars that would ultimately drain away our national wealth.

They didn’t bankrupt us the same way the Mujahadeen helped bring down the Soviet Union decades before, because our economy was much stronger. But they did succeed in putting us deep into the red – with an assist, of course, from Bush’s ideologically driven tax cuts for the wealthy.

The topline number is this: we have spent $7.6 trillion on the military and homeland security since 9/11. The Pentagon’s base budget – which doesn’t include the costs of fighting our wars – has increased by 81 percent during that time (43 percent when adjusted for inflation). The costs of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have now reached $1.26 trillion. But that only scratches the surface; it doesn’t include the long-term costs of caring for badly wounded soldiers, for example.

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Working for peace and Justice in the Middle East