The National Priorities Project provides an interactive calculator called "The Cost of War" that shows the separate costs of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The online calculator races along second by second. You can check on the costs for the entire nation or by individual states, as well as by household, person and taxpayer. It has just passed a trillion dollars.
In May, 2010, USA Today reported that the "monthly cost of the war in Afghanistan, driven by troop increases and fighting on difficult terrain, had topped Iraq costs for the first time since 2003 and shows no sign of letting up. Pentagon spending in February, the most recent month available, was $6.7 billion in Afghanistan compared with $5.5 billion in Iraq. As recently as fiscal year 2008, Iraq was three times as expensive; in 2009, it was twice as costly."
The war in Afghanistan cost nearly $105 billion in the 2010 fiscal year. The cost of sending one U.S. soldier to Afghanistan for one year is $1 million versus an estimated $12,000 for an Afghan soldier.
Although everyone can agree that a lot of money - billions - is being spent annually on the war in Afghanistan, it's not always possible to rely on the accuracy of the figures cited in articles, websites, and even sometimes by the normally reliable congressional research agencies.
The Center for Defense Information (CDI) conducted an enlightening study in 2006, titled "Defense Budget Tutorial: So, You Think You Know the Cost of the Wars?"
The CDI focused on hearings held by Republican Connecticut Congressman Christopher Shays before his subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. Shays required testimony by all three congressional research agencies, the CRS, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The State and Defense Departments also appeared before Shays's subcommittee.
As it turned out, none of the congressional research agencies agreed with one another on what the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had actually cost the U.S. government.
The starting point was a Congressional Research Services' report, "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on terror Operations Since 9/11." The CRS broke out the costs of wars since 9/11 by Afghanistan, Iraq. From 9/11 through 2006, the war in Afghanistan, concluded the CRS, had cost $88.2 billion. Iraq's tally was $318.5 billion.
Donald B. Marron, Acting Director of the Congressional Budget Office, told the subcommittee that the Congressional Research Service got it wrong. The cost for the war in Iraq was $28.5 billion less than what CRS reported, while the war in Afghanistan and operation Noble Eagle cost $27.6 billion more. Noble Eagle was described as "facility security and [formerly] fighter patrols over population centers" in the U.S. The total cost of the wars, Marron told Shays, was $433 billion, not the $439.9 in the CRS report.
Both the CRS and CBO got it wrong according to David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the United States, who testified for the GAO and reported $430.1 billion for all costs for the "war on terror."
A Defense Department spokesman told the subcommittee the real total cost was $416.6 billion, about $20 billion less than the congressional research agencies.
As the Center for Defense Information noted, "Worse yet, Congress doesn't seem to know how much it appropriated either. In a letter of July 20, Shays brought the discrepancies to the attention of the chairman of the House and Senate Appropriations Committee. Shays has received no reply, and Hill staff expect he will get none."
The one thing all the congressional research agencies could agree on was the Defense Department's calculations were utterly unreliable. They pointed out instances in which some costs were overstated by a couple of billion dollars, and other cases in which expenses were double counted. Seven billion dollars that was appropriated to the Defense Department in 2003 for the war was evidently never spent, although the Defense Department had no records on what happened to that money. And since Defense mixes in the money spent on the war with non-war expenses, it is not possible to conclude whether the money was spent as Congress intended. Defense couldn't even provide the subcommittee with an accurate number of troops deployed in both countries, with three DOD tracking systems yielding three different sets of numbers.
The GAO's Marron summed up: "As a result, neither DOD nor the Congress reliably know how much the war is costing and how appropriated funds are being used or have historical data useful in considering future funding needs."
Concluded the Center for Defense Information: "In short, nobody in the executive branch or Congress can reliably say what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost, nor the exact number of troops deployed for them. Various entities have different estimates that vary by tens of billions of dollars and thousands of people; they cannot even agree on the dollars publicly appropriated by Congress. Also, there is no reliable record for how the Pentagon planned to spend the money appropriated to it by Congress, and there is no record whatsoever for how it was actually spent."
So the next time you see an article saying how much the war has cost, take the figure with a grain of salt. Just be sure of one thing: it is a lot of money no matter who is doing the counting.
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