War spending vs. America spending

Running Head : War against Iraq

Opportunities Lost Due To War against Iraq (Name of Student (Name of Instructor

Opportunities Lost Due To War against Iraq

In 2003 , when United States started invading Iraq , Larry Lindsey President Bush 's economic adviser said that the cost of this war might reach 200 billion . Everybody thought this was too much and the only way they can cut back is not to spend any on the reconstruction of Iraq . It has been more than five years and the economic impact of this war has been more

than anybody imagined (Wilson , 2006

According to Congressional Budget office (CBO , this war has been the most expensive war in the history of United States . If we look at all the wars for past sixty years i .e . the war in Afghanistan , Vietnam etc this war had a very great impact on the United States economy The war in Vietnam had a cost of almost 5 .1 Billion per month , which , is a lot less than this war . According to American Enterprise Institute (AEI the cost of Iraq war is nothing as compared to whole of United States economy , but numbers show otherwise (BBC , 2005

According to CBO , The Initial deployment alone , of the troops in Iraq had a cost of almost 9 billion to 13 billion . Conducting the war required almost 6 billion to 9 billion per month . When making these estimations on the cost of war against Iraq the CBO made certain assumptions . A few unknown factors were not included this means the actual cost of this war is more than shown . The number of casualties loss of military equipment etc are such costs which cannot be determined before hand and these costs increase the actual cost of the war . Table I shows estimated cost of the war compared to other wars against terrorism (Billions of Dollars , by Fiscal Year

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 01-07

Military Operations and Other

Defense Activities

Iraq 0 0 46 68 53 89 113 368

Other 14 18 34 21 18 22 39 165

Sub Indigenous Security Forces

Iraq 0 0 0 5 6 3 6 19

Afghanistan 0 0 0 0 1 2 7 11

Sub Diplomatic Operations and Foreign Aid

Iraq 0 0 3 15 1 3 3 25

Other 2 5 2 2 1 2 14

Sub Veterans ' Benefits and Services

Iraq 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

Other 0 0 0 0 0 0

Sub

TABLE I : Estimated Appropriations Provided for Iraq and the War on Terrorism , 2001 to 2007

Source : Congressional Budget Office , 2007

Note : Values may not add due to approximations

Joseph E . Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes presented a research on the cost of war in Iraq . According to this Research the real cost of war in Iraq is a lot more than actual approximations made by the government . This money comes from the tax payers of our nation . According to Stiglitz there are three parts of his calculations that...