by Joseph Stiglitz via Project Syn­di­cate

NEW YORK – The Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, ter­ror attacks by Al Qaeda were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama bin Laden prob­a­bly never imag­ined. Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s response to the attacks com­pro­mised America’s basic prin­ci­ples, under­mined its econ­omy, and weak­ened its security.

The attack on Afghanistan that fol­lowed the 9/11 attacks was under­stand­able, but the sub­se­quent inva­sion of Iraq was entirely uncon­nected to Al Qaeda – as much as Bush tried to estab­lish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expen­sive – orders of mag­ni­tude beyond the $60 bil­lion claimed at the begin­ning – as colos­sal incom­pe­tence met dis­hon­est misrepresentation.

Indeed, when Linda Bilmes and I cal­cu­lated America’s war costs three years ago, the con­ser­v­a­tive tally was $3–5 tril­lion. Since then, the costs have mounted fur­ther. With almost 50% of return­ing troops eli­gi­ble to receive some level of dis­abil­ity pay­ment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in vet­er­ans’ med­ical facil­i­ties, we now esti­mate that future dis­abil­ity pay­ments and health-care costs will total $600–900 bil­lion. But the social costs, reflected in vet­eran sui­cides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and fam­ily breakups, are incalculable.

Even if Bush could be for­given for tak­ing Amer­ica, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pre­tenses, and for mis­rep­re­sent­ing the cost of the ven­ture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in his­tory paid for entirely on credit. As Amer­ica went into bat­tle, with deficits already soar­ing from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax “relief” for the wealthy.

Today, Amer­ica is focused on unem­ploy­ment and the deficit. Both threats to America’s future can, in no small mea­sure, be traced to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Increased defense spend­ing, together with the Bush tax cuts, is a key rea­son why Amer­ica went from a fis­cal sur­plus of 2% of GDP when Bush was elected to its par­lous deficit and debt posi­tion today. Direct gov­ern­ment spend­ing on those wars so far amounts to roughly $2 tril­lion – $17,000 for every US house­hold – with bills yet to be received increas­ing this amount by more than 50%.

More­over, as Bilmes and I argued in our book The Three Tril­lion Dol­lar War, the wars con­tributed to America’s macro­eco­nomic weak­nesses, which exac­er­bated its deficits and debt bur­den. Then, as now, dis­rup­tion in the Mid­dle East led to higher oil prices, forc­ing Amer­i­cans to spend money on oil imports that they oth­er­wise could have spent buy­ing goods pro­duced in the US.

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Comments

One Response to “The Price of 9/11 (Stiglitz)”

1. Pat Kottke Says:
   September 2nd, 2011 at 2:59 pm

   This arti­cle con­tained an inter­ested lead-in, but when I read the para­graph begin­ning "
   Even if Bush could be for­given for tak­ing Amer­ica, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pre­tenses.." I stopped wast­ing my time. Please, spare us the "blame Bush" propaganda.