Gideon Polya, “The Cost of War. $2.5 TRILLION – Accrual Cost of Bush War on Women & Children”, MWC News, 9 March 2007.
The Cost of War. $2.5 TRILLION – Accrual Cost of Bush War on Women & Children
A recent article in the highly respected humanitarian UK journal The New Statesman quoted an estimate of the accrual cost (i.e. the long-term committed cost) of the Bush War on Terror at $2.5 TRILLION – and the estimate came from 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate US Professor Stiglitz (Columbia) and Professor Linda Bilmes (Harvard).
A major long-term cost is due to the death and injury of US soldiers. Thus the article states that “for every soldier dying in Iraq or Afghanistan today, 16 are being wounded”; that “611,729 veterans from the first Gulf war are now receiving disability benefits; a large proportion are suffering from psychiatric illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder and depression”; and that “Bilmes and Stiglitz estimate the additional cost to the economy of the death of a young soldier - typically 25 years old - to be $6.5m”. A horrifying aspect of the New Statesman story was Veteran’s Administration (VA) reactions after Professor Bilmes went public: thus “the number of wounded listed on the VA website dropped from 50,508 to 21,649”. The Bush Administration has also evidently made VA economics expert Professor Bilmes persona non grata ( details ).
This expert Mainstream assessment of Bush War costs to the US taxpayer leads us to another kind of analysis – the Cost to the Iraqi and Afghan victims. If we assume, together with all decent Americans, the core of the American Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal and have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” then we can use this information from US Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) and his Harvard colleague Professor Bilmes to assess (a) the VALUE Bush-ite Amerikans place on Iraqi, Afghan and indeed on Asian and non-European lives and (b) the BILL that racist America is surely obliged to pay for its appalling war crimes in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories. However before doing so we must get expert advice on the post-invasion excess deaths.
As of March 2007, after 4 years of war, the post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) now total ONE MILLION as estimated from data from a top US medical epidemiology group in the World’s top Public Health School (the Nobel Laureate-containing Bloomberg School of Public Health) at the top US Johns Hopkins University, published peer-reviewed in the top UK medical journal The Lancet and endorsed by 27 top Australian medical experts.
The latest 2006 Johns Hopkins data ( indicating 13.3 deaths annually per 1,000 people and an annual Iraqi pre-invasion death rate of 5.5 deaths per 1,000) yields an annual excess death rate of 7.8 per 1,000 i.e. 7,800 per million. Assuming an average population of 27 million this yields post-invasion excess deaths = 7,800 x 27 x 4 = 842,000 i.e. 0.8 million.
However taking the 2006 Johns Hopkins data but using a Jordan/Syria comparative baseline of 4 deaths per 1,000 per year (as opposed to a baseline of 5.5 deaths per 1,000 per year for pre-invasion Iraq after 12 years of crippling Sanctions) gives an annual excess death rate of 9.3 per 1,000 i.e. 9,300 per million and post-invasion excess deaths totalling 9,300 x 27 x 4 = 1,004,400 i.e. 1.0 million as of March 2007.
Further, the UN estimates that there are 3.8 million Iraqi refugees and WHO estimates that the “total annual per capita medical expenditure” in Occupied Iraq is merely $64 - as compared to $23 for Occupied Afghanistan, $2,389 (Occupier UK), $2,874 (Occupier Australia) and $5,711 (Occupier US) (2003 figures). The latest UN Population Division data indicate 2.4 million post-invasion excess deaths in Afghanistan and the latest UNICEF data indicate 370,000 Afghan children are dying each year. (for detailed and documented analyses see MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/12741/42/ , http://mwcnews.net/content/view/11968/42/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/12904/42/ ).
We can now return to our questions about (a) Bush America’s VALUATION of its Asian victims and (b) the BILL America will have to pay.
(a) How Bush America values Asians
America has committed $2.5 trillion to killing 3.4 million Asians i.e. Bush America is saying it “was worth it” to spend $735,000 / head killing Asian men, women and children.
From the above WHO figures and taking the American Declaration of Independence at its word we can estimate that for the US to have paid out a US-style level of medical expenditure for its Iraqi and Afghan subjects (as indeed demanded by International Law) would have cost (1) 29.9 million x $5,688 / head per year x 5.5 years = $935 billion for Afghanistan (population 29.9 million) over 5.5 years and (2) 28.8 million x $5,647 / head per year x 4 years = $651 billion for Iraq (population 28.8 million), for a grand total of $1,586 billion NOT spent to keep 3.4 million people alive.
Bush America is saying “it was NOT worth it” spending $1,586 billion/3.4 million = $466,000 / head keeping its victims alive.
Of course how Bush America values Asians is given by the WHO statistics (2003 figures): $64 each per annum for Iraqis and $23 each per annum for Afghans i.e. it values Western Asian Arabs as $5711/$64 = 89 times LESS valuable than Americans but about 3 times MORE valuable than South Asians who in turn are valued as $5,711 / $23 = 248 times LESS valuable than Americans.
(b) The Bill
Assuming that “all men are created equal”, the commercial accrual valuation of $6.5 million for each dead US soldier can be applied to 3.4 million post-invasion Asian dead in the 21st century Bush War on Terror i.e. $6.5 million / head x 3.4 million = $22.1 million million = $22.1 trillion.
Of course 300 million Americans are already up for a bill of $2.5 trillion i.e. $8,333 / head (the accrual cost of the Bush War on Terror). This Bill will add a further $73,667 / head for a grand total of $82,000 for every man, woman and child in America.
The World must insist – on pain of comprehensive, International Sanctions and Boycotts, seizure of assets and WTO exclusion - that America and its cowardly Allies pay the Bill for this horrendous War on Women and Children.