
The US has spent $1.5 trillion on war since Sept 11 attacks - mfrw
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/10/the-us-has-spent-1point5-trillion-on-war-since-september-11-attacks.html
======
kibwen
The usual thought experiment for framing the magnitudinal difference between
millionaires and billionaires, extended to trillions:

One million seconds ago was Thursday, August 30 (11 days).

One billion seconds ago was Saturday, January 3, 1987 (31 years).

One trillion seconds ago was back during the Pleistocene geological epoch and
the Paleolithic era of prehistory (31,689 years).

The quantity of American resources that have been wasted on war is shameful.
For my own mental health I try not to dwell too long upon all the
infrastructure, research, and social programs that money could have been
better spent on.

~~~
rfinney
What about the contrarian view that the Pax Americana has brought the greatest
era of peace, wealth and standard of living to the world?

Our forefathers paid a higher price.

Security and liberty are not without costs.

~~~
mikeash
That only works if the massive resources spent on Afghanistan and Iraq helped
with the Pax Americana. I see no reason to think it did, and a multitude of
reasons to think the opposite. How many millions have now died because we
knocked over Iraq without anything resembling a real plan for handling the
aftermath?

~~~
CWuestefeld
_because we knocked over Iraq without anything resembling a real plan for
handling the aftermath_

And Libya and Syria...

~~~
09bjb
And Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan again back in the 80s...the
interventionist policy has always been about U.S. corporate interests abroad,
not about democracy or peace.

[https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/Overthrow--
A...](https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/Overthrow--America-s-
Century-of-Regime-Change-from-Hawaii-to-Iraq-9780805082401)

^^ Not completely without bias, but probably contains a lot of inarguable
historical facts that you weren't even close to being taught in high school or
even college.

~~~
stevenwoo
Lies My Teacher Told Me is another pretty good, depressing read that covers
some of this and prior American history with analysis.

------
desdiv
"All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point East to
raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qa'ida in order to make the
generals race there to cause America to suffer human economic and political
losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some
benefits to their private companies. This is in addition to our having
experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight
tyrannical superpowers as we alongside the Mujahedin bled Russia for 10 years
until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. All Praise is due
to Allah.

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of
bankruptcy."[0]

-Osama bin Laden

[0] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/articles/A16990-2004Nov...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/articles/A16990-2004Nov1.html)

~~~
almost_usual
I’m skeptical Russia’s financial woes were solely caused by this strategy.

~~~
Brockenstein
Yeah, Bin Laden was engaging in a bit of PR with those statements. In such
circumstances people always try to take as much credit as they can, no matter
how exaggerated it is.

And for Bin Laden that war was probably center of his universe. For the USSR
it might have been kind of a big deal, but probably not the only issue they
were dealing with worldwide and domestically. Bin Laden was probably never
that concerned with representing that accurately, you know, because who's
going to set him straight?

------
apo
It's very hard for anyone who wasn't fully aware in the months following 9-11
to understand just how much support there was for _both_ wars.

\- American flags flying everywhere.

\- Bumper stickers everywhere.

\- Americans demanding that "something be done" everywhere.

\- Nonstop media barrage favoring both wars.

\- Utter lack of skepticism and rush to believe whatever was being put out by
the Administration.

\- Unshakable faith that the military would make everything right.

As a dissenter, I was afraid to voice my opinions (retribution, being labeled
a traitor) and felt utterly helpless to change anything about the direction
things were headed.

It's one thing to look back and wonder how we ended up in such a mess. It's
another thing to see the conviction on the faces of nearly every person you
talk with that the war would be over within a few weeks and a military
response was the right course.

From what I've read about the early history of US involvement in Vietnam, my
experience is far from unique. That part about the war being over within a few
weeks in particular seems to repeat itself with disturbing regularity: the
Civil War, WWI, Vietnam, Gulf Wars, Afghanistan.

~~~
wrs
It’s also hard at this point to remember the sympathy that poured in from
_around the world_. The US got a free pass to do nearly anything in the days
following 9/11\. Instead of doing something useful with that leverage, we
betrayed that global support by doing something monumentally stupid and
irrelevant, invading Iraq — made even more stupid by having no realistic plan
for the aftermath.

All of which was probably according to plan (or even better than expected) as
far as Bin Laden was concerned.

~~~
bla2
I was in continental Europe at the time and the sentiment here was "they're
going to do something stupid" and far from a free pass.

~~~
wrs
What I mean is, if the US had decided to do something that seemed sensible,
even if it was outside the usual bounds of behavior, I think most people would
have looked the other way. Indeed, we did do something stupid, but we did even
that with a coalition of other countries.

More importantly, I like to think other countries would have signed on to
something _constructive_ quickly as well. Wasted opportunity.

~~~
consumer451
> More importantly, I like to think other countries would have signed on to
> something constructive quickly as well. Wasted opportunity.

Personal anecdote:

I was in a tiny town in Portugal during 9/11\. In the following days, I read
all of the available papers and saw that even China was ready to share intel
with the USA. Random Portuguese people offered me a place to stay while my
country was "a war zone." The outpouring of global support was unprecedented.

Meanwhile, I called my younger brother who was normally well informed, was
attending a very liberal university, and yet was worried about ME! All he knew
about was all of "the anti-American sentiment" around the world. That was the
day I truly understood the power of the reactionary idiocy of US media.

The USA could have used 9/11 to really start A New American Century, but the
morons in charge were truly just morons. They were all part of a think tank
named The Project for a New American Century, yet they let that opportunity
pass them by. This was the moment that I understood the idiocy of neo-cons.

When future historians analyze the end of the American era, this will truly be
the turning point.

Note: I have been careful to avoid being political on HN, but this topic
deserves no less. I will never forget.

------
kldavis4
I can see strong parallels between this and the fall of the Roman Empire:

"Maintaining an army to defend the border of the Empire from barbarian attacks
was a constant drain on the government. Military spending left few resources
for other vital activities, such as providing public housing and maintaining
quality roads and aqueducts. Frustrated Romans lost their desire to defend the
Empire. The empire had to begin hiring soldiers recruited from the unemployed
city mobs or worse from foreign counties. Such an army was not only
unreliable, but very expensive. The emperors were forced to raise taxes
frequently which in turn led again to increased inflation." Source:
[https://www.rome.info/history/empire/fall/](https://www.rome.info/history/empire/fall/)

~~~
Thiez
Where are the modern borders in this parallel? I suppose the US borders on
Canada and Mexico, but it would be rather impolite to refer to their people as
barbarians, and defense from the attacks of those countries is not where all
the money is going.

I'm just an outsider in this matter, but it looks a lot like the US is
spending money on offensive wars that it elects to engage in, rather than
having to protect its borders from "the barbarians". So I don't really see the
strong parallel.

~~~
CapricornNoble
The borders of the US Empire are not physical. They are financial. It all
revolves around the Petrodollar system (
[https://youtu.be/JN5q_0H41VE](https://youtu.be/JN5q_0H41VE) or any other
"Petrodollar explained" video on YT).

Basically the US cut a deal with the Saudis decades ago "price your oil only
in US dollars and we'll support your monarchy". Bottom line is that any
industrial nation that needs energy must hold US dollars to purchase oil,
which vastly inflates global demand for dollars, artificially supporting our
currency and also essentially acting as a tax on the global economy. US
hegemony is essentially reliant on the US military keeping everyone else in
line with regards to oil pricing as well as central banking. Consider:

Saddam Hussein ditched USD for EUR in 2000 (
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeur...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro)
). Deposed in 2003.

Iran opened a non-dollar-denominated oil burse in 2008. Promptly sanctioned
and eventually cut off from the SWIFT banking system. (
[https://apjjf.org/-China-Hand-/2719/article.html](https://apjjf.org/-China-
Hand-/2719/article.html) ) Invasion was discussed. Remember McCain's "Bomb
bomb Iran" moment? But the US military was already overstretched and in no
position to crack open Iran (a MUCH tougher nut than Iraq or Afghanistan).

Qaddafi wanted to create a new pan-African currency, starting in Libya with
gold/oil-backed dinars. Deposed in 2011. (
[https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/01/06/new-
hillary-...](https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/01/06/new-hillary-
emails-reveal-true-motive-for-libya-intervention/) )

Some websites have argued that after Ukraine's revolution all their gold
reserves disappeared as well, possibly into US/European hands. I haven't found
super-reliable data on that though.

Point is, these are the borders of the empire, one that is maintained by the
global distribution of US military might, as well as international
organizations such as the IMF. Before anyone can posit solutions to American's
bank-busting spending on the military-industrial complex, you must first
understand the hidden context of what really motivates American actions on the
world stage.

------
codyb
I see a lot of talk here about what we could have done with the money instead,
which is fine. It's good to be able to reason about your mistakes and
missteps.

My question is, now that we're here, what do we do now? Pulling out of Iraq
and Afghanistan seems, irresponsible to say the least. Certainly surrending
the whole country of Afghanistan back to the Taliban would be an incredible
blemish, and no citizen of another nation would ever risk their lives to help
a nation who so callously discarded those who did the same.

And certainly abandoning the Kurds in Iraq would be another tragedy, as well
as opening up that nation to another horrific power vacuum situation.

And that's the lower bound of what we could do. We could unilaterally pull out
our forces from all over the world, abandoning our commitments to the
incredibly succesful NATO and to other allies including Israel, Japan, and S.
Korea.

I'm not a big fan of prolonged war. I think Afghanistan was more justified
than the incredible shit show that was Iraq. I think the Taliban and Isis and
Assad (where the US gets criticized both for not doing enough and doing too
much) and Hussein are horrific people and entities.

But these articles, while important for highlighting the incredible drain on
national treasure we've subjected ourselves to seem to me to avoid very
important questions about where to go from here and instead just assign a
number to matters of geopolitics which affect billions of lives the world
over.

Of course, as geopolitics is such an incredibly vast and complicated topic
perhaps that is beyond the scope of these stories.

Still... where do we go from here?

~~~
mateus1
I'm not in the US and I can't help but be astounded as to how little debate
there is on the effectiveness of the war machine. I'm not pro war but I can
see how just up and leaving Afghanistan would be extremely problematic.
However, it seems to me Americans are ok with the apparent lack of results in
these wars. I'm not an expert but it seems both pointless and ineffective in
any front.

~~~
Brockenstein
It is a crazy contradiction. And as long as there's someone to blame for the
lack of results it's an excuse to keep persisting.

The low number of U.S. causalities keep outrage to a minimum. Lots of people
probably don't even know someone who's been wounded in combat, let alone
killed.

The monetary cost is just invisible, it's not like a lot of citizens are
really tracking the budget. Those who don't, but claim to care about the
national debt will usually go after social programs first because the idea of
welfare queens and people they just don't like using social programs is
magnified into a serious huge problem that if we could just solve that we
could afford everything else easily...

It's the equivalent of screaming about someone dropping a penny but lighting a
%100 bill on fire to get everyone's attention for the tirade.

And while many U.S. citizens know the U.S. has a large and powerful military I
don't think they really have the idea of the scale it really is compared to
the rest of the world. At which point I like to point out that there's 20
active aircraft carriers in the world, the U.S. operates 10. We also operate
10 escort carriers that are smaller, but still larger than half the other
aircraft carriers operated by other countries. Just as a single example. And
it's not like we've just run amok only with aircraft carriers.

~~~
codyb
This seems misguided to me.

For one, even if you take the 6tn total cost for these two wars you're talking
about 330bn a year for 17 years. A staggering sum to be certain, but the USG's
expenditures measure in the trillions annually.

For another, our immense military has almost certainly prevented regional
conflicts (say Saudi Arabia vs Iran, China vs the rest of the South Pacific)
and has allowed other nations to bring up their economies without having to
worry about military spending (Japan, Germany).

The net positives from a more peaceful world are very hard to measure but a
lot of it is having such a large dog in the fight.

More equality of armies means more regional conflicts.

Finally as a measure of GDP US military expenditures are still less than
several countries.

You can point to our many follies because of course you can, that's simple and
easy, and I'm not trying to defend them. But to say we've run amok would imply
that they've done no good and I don't believe that to be the case.

Like it or not under US hegemony the world's been safer and more prosperous
than its ever been and a tremendous number of people have been lifted out of
poverty globally.

Is that all because of US hegemony? Maybe not but I'd be hard pressed to see a
clear argument for why the world's defining super power would not have had
some measurable role in the fulfillment of those measures.

------
prolikewh0a
Looks like the total cost, including new domestic programs as well as treating
veterans is $5.6 trillion.

[https://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/11/costssummary](https://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/11/costssummary)

~~~
otalp
That averages to 330 billion annually...

~~~
dnomad
Yeah this number is way off. A better estimate is 5-6 trillion and many will
say that's also likely too low. A solid estimate, when you factor in excessive
defense spending that wasn't technically spent on one war, is 10+ trillion
dollars.

The funny thing is that many Americans are perfectly happy with this... but if
you bring up, say, universal healthcare they rage against the very idea of the
government spending so much money.

~~~
lolsal
> The funny thing is that many Americans are perfectly happy with this... but
> if you bring up, say, universal healthcare they rage against the very idea
> of the government spending so much money.

You're over-simplifying the healthcare issue. It's not just about money. It's
about individual rights and responsibility of the government.

------
InclinedPlane
The money seems to be the smallest cost of these wars. We've normalized
hideous drone bombing campaigns undertaken on the slightest justifications. On
paper drone attacks are precise and backed by meticulous research, in reality
they are backed by often dubious intelligence and executed without sufficient
care for collateral damage, resulting in _at least_ a 50% rate of
innocent/civilian casualties. By that measure they are hardly better than car
bombs, but they are high tech so somehow they escape (for us in the west
anyway) the negative connotation of terrorism. Yet by any rational measure
they are terrorism. There are countless children in territories we've
terrorized who fear sunny skies because good weather means drones operate. And
we've carried that horrid tradition forward in our participation in Saudi
Arabia's bombing campaign in Yemen, among others.

Meanwhile, we've also normalized the most horrid perversions of our democracy,
our values, and the rule of law at home. We've grown comfortable with
indefinite detention. We had a hot and heavy flirtation with systematized
torture. We've created monsters like ICE and the DHS who are given ridiculous
powers in a "border zone" that includes 2/3 of the entire US population.

All in all, I don't think history will be kind in its assessment of our
reaction to the September 11th attacks.

------
1ba9115454
Enough to end world poverty?

To end extreme poverty worldwide in 20 years, Sachs calculated that the total
cost per year would be about $175 billion. This represents less than one
percent of the combined income of the richest countries in the world.

~~~
lbriner
If the only problem in the world is lack of finance then great but we have
seen plenty of examples of money being spent and then mislaid/stolen/injected
into private companies and politicians pockets etc. so the figure is largely
meaningless.

------
justin66
It is a large enough amount of money that a person cannot really fathom it
without some serious thought. I expect many people read that and think "well,
yeah, it's expensive."

------
almost_usual
If it wasn’t spent overseas it’d be spent somewhere else. This country’s
foundation is defense and war. There’s a reason why engineering schools have
plenty of resources.

------
msiyer
There are evil forces. We need to protect ourselves. We need military.
However, it is naive to think that we, as citizens in a democracy, have any
say in the wars we engage in. If we have no say, who does? If we have no say,
is the one who does accountable to us? If we have no say and the one who does
is not accountable to us, then is this a democracy? Too much power in the
hands of too few. We sacrifice our hard earned money, our kith and kin... so
that a few psychopaths can stroke their egos.

------
cirgue
For some perspective on this sum, the (edit: annual) GDP of the US went from
around 11 trillion to around 18 trillion during this same time period.

~~~
qeternity
The _annual_ gdp...

~~~
apexalpha
All gdp is annual.

------
onomonomono
For perspective, we spend about $1 trillion on means-tested welfare programs
every year. So 17 years of war would cover about 18 months of welfare
spending.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_States#Means-
tested)

~~~
citation_please
Made me think: if we cut corporate taxes, raised the minimum wage, and reduced
means-tested welfare, where would we end up? Same position but with less
bureaucracy?

Something tells me that the welfare safety net has more societal benefits than
a wage floor, but right now we don't really have a respectable form of either
compared to 20 years ago.

------
dandare
I am surprised that $1.5 trillion does not look as big as I expected in the
perspective of 1 year US federal budget [https://us.wikibudgets.org/w/united-
states-budget-2016](https://us.wikibudgets.org/w/united-states-budget-2016)

------
jjcc
A few of observation/speculation:

1\. Most American/European (with a few exceptions [1]) only focus on the
spending cost of their own countries but less concern about the cost of the
nations that the wars involved. i.e. Iraq, Libya, etc. Breaking an exiting
stable eco systems have huge impact on local people. In Iraq, 200k - 600k
direct or indirect death. It translated to 2 million - 6 million American if
we put population into account. In Libya with a chaos satiation waves of
illegal immigrants have a chance to go to Europa from the country , which
changed the political scenery of many Eurapean countries. Again the cost is
not counted into the war.

2.Perception defect of modern human let the war criminals being defined to
only those who kill innocent people. For example Hitler is considered to be
responsible for deaths of millions so he is a war criminal. This is visible to
modern human mind. But most Iraqi deaths were not caused by US bombing but
their killing with each other or indirect slow deaths by some other reasons ,
say sudden disrupt of power in a hospital. Not many modern human being
consider US is responsible. I would praised the old Bush stopping the first
gulf war to let Saddam survive and avoid unpredictable risk of destroying
stable eco system which has worse result that more distributed deaths happen
with no visible war criminals

3.(Omitted) Sorry, will be down voted so just to be brief: Assange said
"Journalists are war criminals". I didn’t understand the meaning initially.
But seeing so many comments here being down voted because they are not aligned
with public belief, I realize that how easily the mass population can be
fooled. The reason that Journalists can fool public opinion is they really
report truth but only when things can be verified. Otherwise they are very
likely just selling their beliefs and some time they fabricate stories to
support their beliefs.

[1] [https://williamblum.org/books/americas-deadliest-
export](https://williamblum.org/books/americas-deadliest-export)

------
motiw
I think the main story here is the mismangnent of this funds

------
photos_victim
I worked out in 2005 that the money spent on these wars is enough to have
bought all of non-urbanized Canada, which seems like a better investment.

------
trumped
Does that include the black budget?

------
conrmahr
“Mission Accomplished”

------
coding123
This should probably be flagged before it ends up a flamewar in here.

~~~
berbec
It's actually stating fairly sane. I'm suprise we haven't gotten any rage
faces yet.

------
kailuowang
it's just one and a half apple.

------
mmjaa
_crickets_

Nobody seems to care. I guess its because, without that spending, America
would be a third-world country by now.

EDIT: you can't discuss America's illegal wars from the perspective of the
innocent victims. This will get you downvotes - nobody likes to think of their
military as anything less than 100% honourable and invulnerable to such error.
Nobody wants to know about the maimed kids and utterly evil destruction of
civilisation at the hands of America's Thug Warrior Class... You can't discuss
America's illegal wars from the perspective of the cost to Americans - nobody
likes to think what those $Trillions could have done, to improve American
society - and there is _much_ it could have done (e.g. Healthcare, Skid Row,
colony on Mars, etc.). So, how can we get Americans to see the idiocy of their
military-industrial-pharmaceutical-complex? What methods, perhaps extreme,
might gain their decadent attention to the issue of their out of control
state? One wonders ..

~~~
prolikewh0a
>I guess its because, without that spending, America would be a third-world
country by now.

Care to explain how this is true?

~~~
qaq
Well the effects are hard to calculate but hard to argue that having worlds
top military gives one a lot of negotiation leverage.

~~~
vibrio
Does it? Can that leverage be disentangled from being the largest economy?
Economics is a much more effective tool.

~~~
qaq
Yes it can imagine there is no US mil and Saddam Hussein actually took over
Quatar Kuweit and UAE and Saudi Arabia and than made a deal with Russia. Whant
to calculate effects on US ecomony?

~~~
vibrio
We did prevent that scenario. The discussion did shift from "having the worlds
top military" to "imagine there is no US military". I don't advocate US
military disarmament or blind pacifism, but there is some room for enhancing
efficiency and still maintaining the world's top military (and economy).

~~~
qaq
I think I worded the example poorly but my understanding is that there is a
mil. doctrine of what kind of resources US mil. needs to be able to have X
silm. engagements it's hard to say how much you can scale back and keep the
same capability. I would imagine that it includes handling Russia and China at
the same time for example.

------
omarforgotpwd
not only that but the latest iPhone event has been delayed by one day. Thanks
a lot terrorists...

