Friday September 26, 2003 at 6:26 PM
We Broke It, We Bought It
Appearing in Politics
As history’s most conspicuous case of “you broke it, you bought it”, the cost of the U.S. occupation of Iraq is somewhere between alarming and outrageous. With current expenditures already north of $75 billion and another $87 billion waiting in the wings of Congress, it looks like we’re in for a minimum of $162 billion; that is $162,000,000,000.
If your opinion is that we went to war because Iraq was a threat to the United States, think of it as roughly $555 for every American citizen. If however, you believe we went to war because Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator and it was our moral duty to liberate the Iraqi people, think of it as something like $7,291 for every Iraqi.
Regardless, think of it as a cost to be born in almost entirely by American taxpayers. Current indications hold that the rest of the world is unlikely to come up with more than $2 billion.
Of course, the ultimate cost will be considerably more. Although the administration estimates that reconstruction costs will come to $75 billion, only $20 billion of the $162 billion already allocated is for military operations.
To return to the “you broke it, you bought it” argument, we’re on track to spend something on the order of $142 billion to destroy a country and then another $75 billion to put it back together. That’s an awful lot of money for a country with 12.1% of its citizens living in poverty.
