A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Iraq

Back in the '80s, Reaganites loved calling for a "cost-benefit analysis" of every federal regulation. If, say, disposing properly of toxic waste instead of dumping it into the nearest source of fresh drinking water cost DuPont or Monsanto a penny more than the estimated value of the human lives lost due to drinking the poison that came out of the faucet, then tough shit, poisoned humans! Your pathetic lives are worth less than corporate profits.

Funny how today's repugs don't seem interested in applying that same logic to wingnut masturbatory materials like the Iraq clusterfuck.

So the wonks at Think Progress did it for them.

But while the ultimate legacy of the U.S. intervention in Iraq is still to be determined, it is possible — and necessary, given the implications for future interventions — to attempt to tally the war’s costs and benefits to the national security of the United States. Back in May, my colleagues Brian Katulis and Peter Juul and I attempted to do this with our report, The Iraq War Ledger.

SNIP

But while a nascent democratic Iraqi republic allied with the United States could potentially yield benefits in the future, the costs of the war are very real in the here and now. The financial costs are fairly straightforward, and they are staggering (sources in report):

- Cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom: $748.2 billion
- Projected total cost of veterans’ health care and disability: $422 billion to $717 billion

The human costs, especially in terms of Iraqi casualties, are somewhat more difficult to ascertain, but even using the most conservative estimates, the numbers are deeply troubling:

- Total deaths: Between 110,663 and 119,380
- Coalition deaths: 4,712
- U.S. deaths: 4,394
- U.S. wounded: 31,768
- U.S. deaths as a percentage of coalition deaths: 93.25 percent
- Iraqi Security Force deaths: At least 9,451
- Total coalition and ISF deaths: At least 14,163
- Iraqi civilian deaths: Between 96,037 and 104,7542
- Non-Iraqi contractor deaths: At least 463
- Internally displaced persons: 2.6 million
- Refugees: 1.9 million

Least appreciated, however, are the war’s strategic costs, the implications of which the U.S. will likely be grappling with for decades:

SNIP

When measured against the war’s costs, there’s simply no plausible calculus by which the Iraq intervention can be judged a success. Acknowledging this is, of course, not a criticism of the American troops who fought honorably and sacrificed immensely to carry out a misguided policy, but of the politicians, policymakers and pundits who helped sell and implement that policy in the first place.

Read the whole thing.

Cost-benefit analysis cuts both ways.