Via the LAT: Cost of Iraq war will surpass Vietnam’s by year’s end
If Congress approves the supplemental funding request submitted this week by the Obama administration, the cost of the war will rise by $87 billion for 2009, including a previous supplement approved during the Bush administration.Added to the amount spent through 2008, it would mean the Iraq war will have cost taxpayers a total of about $694 billion. By comparison, the Vietnam War cost $686 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars and World War II cost $4.1 trillion, according to a Congressional Research Service study completed last year.
The piece is interesting, as it details various reasons for the cost, including the fact that all-volunteer forces are more expensive than conscripts. Likewise, sophisticated modern equipment is more expensive than that used in the past.
As such,
Questions remain over the accuracy of comparing the costs of wars across decades, and scholars warn of the potential for distortion.“The world has gotten steadily more expensive,” said Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for International and Strategic Studies, a think tank. “How do you relate the cost of an old Sherman tank to a modern M1 tank?”
Points about how well comparisons can be made aside, the bottom line being that the war has been quite expensive, and will continue to be such. If anything, as we seek to understand our fiscal situation in the US, it behooves us to remember these numbers as well as all the others.
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