The Surge Still to Come

Will Keola Thomas – Afghanistan Study Group

(Costs for the care of WWI vets didn’t peak until 1969)

It seems the fiscal impact of the United States’ entanglement in Afghanistan is getting a little more attention these days, but it always bears repeating: the U.S. has budgeted $119 billion dollars for the war in 2011.

Perhaps it’s the partisan gridlock and imminent threat of government shutdown over the proposed $33 – $40 billion in budget cuts that is leading folks to ponder the hundreds of billions that have been spent over the last decade in support of a corrupt government in Kabul. Or maybe it’s the possibility of a catastrophic default should Congress not agree to raise the U.S.’s $14.3 trillion debt limit before it is reached sometime between now and May 16 that is beginning to draw more attention to the cost of the war.

At least $30 billion of that yearly price tag is a result of the Obama administration’s escalation of the war in December of 2009. The price paid in the lives of soldiers and marines is a more frequently cited figure, though it can never be repeated enough: 598 Americans have lost their lives since the announcement of the troop surge.

The majority of these deaths were caused by insurgents’ increased use of improvised explosive devices. When the troop surge met the surge in the Taliban’s use of IEDs, it resulted in a tripling of soldiers with wounds requiring the amputation of more than one limb. A report in The LA Times highlights a recent study on the increase of these wounds which should be included in any accounting of the war’s costs.

The study was undertaken by doctors at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where most troops are treated after being wounded in Afghanistan. Officials say that Landstuhl is the busiest it has been since it received the wounded from the battle for the Iraqi city of Fallouja in 2004, but that the number and severity of the wounds requiring treatment at the hospital is unprecedented.

“Everybody was taken aback by the frequency of these injuries: the double amputations, the injuries to the penis and testicles…Nothing like this has been seen before.”

It hasn’t been seen before and it hasn’t been accounted for.

There is no measure for what soldiers who have suffered a catastrophic injury must endure. But there are figures for the cost that the United States must shoulder in order to fulfill its obligations towards those who have sacrificed so much. Those numbers are staggering and very real, but they aren’t included in government figures about the cost of the war.

While the Congressional Budget Office uses accounting methods that consider the budget costs of the war over ten years, “[The evidence shows] the cost of caring for war veterans continues [and] typically rises for several decades and peaks in 30 to 40 years or more… The costs rise over time as veterans get older and their medical needs grow,” according to Prof. Linda Bilmes, a professor of public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, a 2001 Nobel Laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, have written extensively on the long term costs of America’s wars. They note that the cost of caring for war veterans rises for decades after the last shot is fired. The peak year for payment of disability claims to the veterans of World War I didn’t occur until 1969, fifty years after the armistice was signed. The costs of caring for Vietnam veterans have not yet peaked. The U.S. currently spends $4 billion a year to care for veterans of the first Gulf War. The sum of those payments will soon surpass Desert Storm’s $61 billion initial cost.

For those troops returning to the United States through the hospital at Landstuhl the war in Afghanistan has already taken an enormous toll. The country as a whole, however, has not been informed of the tremendous costs still to come. Bilmes and Stiglitz estimate that providing medical care and disability for returning veterans will cost the United States between $589 and $984 billion over the coming decades.

Politicians from both parties are demanding fiscal responsibility so that the economic opportunities of future generations aren’t mortgaged for today’s failed policies. If their demands are to be taken seriously Congress must direct its attention to the long-term costs of the failed policy in Afghanistan and hold the Obama administration to its promise to begin bringing the troops home in July.

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