Iraq and Afghanistan War Costs Part 1: The Pace of Our Afghanistan Drawdown
Mary Kaszynski
Afghanistan Study Group Blogger
President Obama’s plan to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and 23,000 more by next summer was a moderate but welcome beginning. We’ve already started to see war spending fall as a result: the request for fiscal year 2012 was $118 billion, a 26% drop from the 2011 total of $159 billion, and the lowest level since 2005.
However, encouraging as it is to have a plan – any plan – the drawdown is not what it could be. In fact, there are a number of factors that may keep war costs high in the near term. We’ll examine three of these in the coming weeks.
Our first topic is the matter of the drawdown pace. Obama’s plan for the next year has netted some modest savings, and war costs will continue to decline if the drawdown continues. But there is plenty of support for slowing down the drawdown.
From commanders in the field to policymakers and opinion leaders, there is little consensus on the right timing for the Afghanistan withdrawal. For every Jon Huntsman who wants to bring the troops home now there is a John McCain with “deep reservations” about the “aggressive draw-down schedule,” a Rick Perry who would “like to know if it’s possible at 40,000,” and a Rick Santorum determined to stay “until victory is achieved.”
On Iraq, the debate is the same. In a recent Washington Post op-ed Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham argued that the situation in Iraq is so unstable as to requires at least twice that amount – at least 10,000, and as many as 25,000.
It’s all too easy to argue for leaving troops when, as House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon put it, “We are at the mall while Marines are in the mud.” And it’s easy to forget about the costs of war when we’ve been putting it on the national credit card instead of paying for it up front.
This has been standard practice from the beginning for Iraq and Afghanistan, “the first wars in American history that we didn’t even try to pay for,” noted Representative Jim Cooper in a recent HASC hearing. “There was no war tax. There were no war bonds. . . . Instead, we borrowed the money from China and other foreign nations.”
Those who want to keep troops in Afghanistan try to downplay the costs, often contradicting basic economic facts. Take Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels for example. He claims that the wars are “a very, very small part of the problem we’ve come into,” despite clear evidence that war costs are one of the main drivers of the national deficit.
If Daniels and co. get their way, the drawdown may slow down dramatically. And we may continue to pay enormous sums for wars that few believe is winnable.
