
Defense Department: The War on Terror Has Cost $250M a Day for 16 Years - Deinos
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/defense-department-war-terror-has-cost-250-million-day-16-years-2608639
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touchofevil
It seems wrong to categorize the war in Iraq as part of The War on
Terror(ism), since Iraq wasn't involved in 9/11\. The best explanation I ever
found as to why the US went to war in Iraq was in the article below. It
basically says that the Neoconservative faction of the right wanted to bring
democracy to the middle east long before 9/11, but 9/11 was their opportunity
to actually do it. Here's an excerpt:

"Neoconservatism, which had been around for decades, mixed humanitarian
impulses with an almost messianic faith in the transformative virtue of
American military force, as well as a deep fear of an outside world seen as
threatening and morally compromised.

This ideology stated that authoritarian states were inherently destabilizing
and dangerous; that it was both a moral good and a strategic necessity for
America to replace those dictatorships with democracy — and to dominate the
world as the unquestioned moral and military leader.

Neoconservatism's proponents, for strategic as well as political reasons,
would develop an obsession with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. That obsession would,
by the end of the decade, congeal into a policy, explicitly stated: regime
change.

Their case was always grandly ideological, rooted in highly abstract and
untested theories about the nature of the world and America's rightful place
in it. Their beliefs were so deeply held that when 9/11 shook the foundations
of American foreign policy, they were able to see only validation of their
worldview, including their belief in the urgent need to bring democracy to
Iraq.

It was this ideological conviction, more than any piece of intelligence or lie
told about it, that primarily led America into Iraq. Weapons of mass
destruction were the stated justification, but they were never the real
reason, nor was bad intelligence."

[https://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/11022104/iraq-war-
neoconservat...](https://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/11022104/iraq-war-
neoconservatives)

~~~
pjc50
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/07/usa.iraq](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/oct/07/usa.iraq)
: transcript of speech by George W Bush.

"Many Americans have raised legitimate questions about the nature of the
threat, about the urgency of action. Why be concerned now? About the link
between Iraq developing weapons of terror and the wider war on terror.

...

Over the years Iraq has provided safe haven to terrorists such as Abu Nidal,
whose terror organization carried out more than 90 terrorist attacks in 20
countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans.

Iraq has also provided safe haven to Abu Abbas, who is responsible for seizing
the Achille Lauro and killing an American passenger. And we know that Iraq is
continuing to finance terror and gives assistance to groups that use terrorism
to undermine Middle East peace.

We know that Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network share a common enemy: the
United States of America. We know that Iraq and al-Qaida have had high-level
contacts that go back a decade."

(The question of how much of this was subsequently found to be true or false
is a different one, but a key characteristic of the War On Terror is the use
of lies or misleading generalisations to maintain the war)

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harry8
Includes the cost of paying and feeding troops. Presumably you have to pay and
feed them if you aren't at war and they're playing cards and doing drills in
established US bases and hopefully acting as a deterrent to war?

I'd like to see the actual marginal cost of the war on terror that excludes
money that would have been spent on defence anyway (spent anyway rightly or
wrongly, this isn't judgement about whether that spending should have gone up,
down or flat).

BTW the war against Iraq absolutely was "War on Terror" It was sold as such
with "Weapons of Mass Destruction" That justification being entirely false and
knowingly to those who made it is beside the point, without the War on Terror
existence and used as a justification it is reasonable to assume the Iraq
invasion doesn't happen.

~~~
h0l0cube
The wiki page for the US Defence Budget has graphs[0]. One shows the per-
capita expenditure appearing to trend downwards over the very long term[1] but
still showing an obvious bump for the gulf war and the 'War on Terror',
another highlighting a doubling of spending since the after the Gulf War in
absolute terms[2] and a less pronounced jump when adjusted per capita[3]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States)

[1]
[https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1792_201...](https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1792_2017USp_18s2li011lcn_30f_Recent_Defense_Spending)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InflationAdjustedDefenseS...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InflationAdjustedDefenseSpending.PNG)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PerCapitaInflationAdjuste...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PerCapitaInflationAdjustedDefenseSpending.PNG)

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moonbug22
Sounds like a win for the other team.

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Clubber
The war on the constitution is a better moniker.

~~~
colejohnson66
Nowhere in the Constitution is there listed a right to use drugs.

[EDIT] maybe I need to read better

~~~
vanattab
Where did drugs come from? I know most of use don't bother to read the actual
article but maybe we should at least read the whole title.

~~~
colejohnson66
I read the title as War on Drugs. Then, like I normally do, I read the
comments before the article, and posted that comment before reading.

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yuhong
It was defense that was part of why US went off the gold standard.

