ASG Blog
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DOD Comptroller: Fielding One Soldier In Afghanistan Costs Taxpayers $850,000
Published: March 6th, 2012
Mary Kaszynski
Afghanistan Study GroupRecent violence in Afghanistan has led to the deaths of six U.S. troops and politicians and pundits are insisting that U.S. troops stay longer. But isn’t this a sign that the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan isn’t working? Their solution is to leave twenty or thirty thousand troops behind—but how much will it cost?
Department of Defense Comptroller Robert Hale has the answer: deploying one U.S. solider to Afghanistan for one year costs $850,000. The number, which came up during a congressional hearing last week, caught many by surprise, since $850,000 is quite a jump from the Pentagon’s previous estimate of $600,000.
It’s not even clear that $850,000 is the right number. The Pentagon estimate may only account for military personnel, operations and maintenance costs. If we add in all war-related costs, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimated our per soldier cost at $1.2 million. The Congressional Research Service estimates that operational costs rose 44% over seven years – from $483,000 per troop in 2005 to $694,000 in 2011.
Whether the “real” cost is $1.2 million or $694,000, the point is clear: the cost of deploying a soldier to Afghanistan is exorbitant. Just to put this in perspective, recall that the median household income in the U.S. is about $50,000 per year. Using the smaller estimate, the cost of deploying one soldier to Afghanistan is more than 14 times what one American family makes in one year. No wonder we are in a budget crisis.
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Afghanistan Weekly Reader: Pentagon Spends $2 Billion in Afghanistan Per Week While Anti-American Riots Rage
Published: March 1st, 2012
Will the violent protests in Afghanistan speed up the U.S. withdrawal? It’s the multi-billion dollar question. The administration insists that the answer is no. “Nothing that has happened over the past week is going to deter us…We’re making progress.” Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters on Monday. “The fundamentals of our strategy remain sound,” he added.
Despite increasing calls for an end to the war, the timeline remains the same. There are still 90,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Some will be withdrawn over the summer, leaving 68,000 by the end of September. When those 68,000 will be withdrawn is anyone’s guess – as is the plan for the U.S. presence in Afghanistan after 2014.
The costs are the same too. While anti-American riots continue, the Pentagon is still spending over $2 billion a week in Afghanistan, and still planning to spend $86 billion over he next year.
From ASG
2/28/12
Cutting Veterans’ Benefits To Save The War Budget
Afghanistan Study Group by Mary Kaszynski
The US spends hundreds of billions on operations, security, and humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, with little oversight. Meanwhile, in the US, soldiers who fought in Afghanistan struggle to pay their medical bills.ARTICLES
2/28/12
One soldier, one year: $850,000 and rising
CNN by Larry Shaughnessy
Keeping one American service member in Afghanistan costs between $850,000 and $1.4 million a year, depending on who you ask. But one matter is clear, that cost is going up.2/27/12
Gingrich sees impossible task in Afghanistan, takes aim at Santorum
Atlanta Journal by Jeremy Redmon
Newt Gingrich on Monday said the United States is trying to achieve the impossible in Afghanistan amid escalating violence over the burning of Qurans on a U.S. military base.OPINION
2/29/12
Why We Couldn’t Change Afghanistan
The Atlantic by Michael Hart
The future of Afghanistan will be determined by forces that antedate the latest Western effort to direct a turbulent area–and which probably will long survive this and future efforts to dominate the country.2/29/12
It’s time to declare victory in Afghanistan and come home — before we have to shoot our way out
Fox News by KT McFarland
No matter what our political leaders say, we’re losing ground fast, and nothing short of another ten years of American blood and treasure will change that.
It’s time to declare victory and come home, before we have to shoot our way out. -
Cutting veterans’ benefits to save the war budget
Published: February 28th, 2012
Mary Kaszynski
Afghanistan Study Group
The US spends hundreds of billions on operations, security, and humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, with little oversight. Meanwhile, in the US, soldiers who fought in Afghanistan struggle to pay their medical bills.
The costs of caring for wounded vets has more than doubled over the past ten years, from $62 billion in 2004 to $140 billion requested in 2013. Only a fraction of that is dedicated to mental healthcare programs – $6.2 billion, a slight 5% increase over last year.
That increase may not be enough, if recent events are any indication. The Army is currently investigating the case of 14 soldiers whose diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may have been altered so that they could not receive full disability pensions.
The investigation is ongoing, but if true, it would have troubling implications for all war veterans. Studies show that 10% to 20% of the 2.3 million troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 suffer from PTSD. Lifetime treatment costs for veterans with PTSD are estimated at $1.5 million.
These costs add up, but they are still nothing compared to the costs of ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon’s war budget for fiscal year 2012 is $115 billion – over $2 billion per week. So while we are trying to cut corners in veterans’ care, the war budget has escaped scrutiny.
Take Afghan security funding for example. Since 2001 the US has spent $52 billion training and equipping the Afghan national security forces. Officials say that the majority of these costs were for startup, and that future costs will be much lower – $5.7 billion in 2013 compared to $11.2 billion in 2012. Still, Afghanistan, with its $18 billion GDP, will be unable to cover the costs of security forces for quite some time.
So what have we gotten for $52 billion, plus unknown future costs? Only 18% of Afghan troops and police can read at a first-grade level. Pentagon officials estimate that 1% of Afghan units can operate without NATO assistance. Desertion rates are increasing. Equipment is being sold by Afghan forces in Pakistani bazaars. Perhaps the most sobering statistic: between 2005 and 2011, 52 US and allied troops were killed by their Afghan counterparts. Just this past week two more US soldiers were killed by a man wearing an Afghan National Army uniform.
Clearly something about the way we’re investing in Afghanistan just isn’t working. It’s time to develop a more cost-effective strategy, that starts with bringing US troops home. Saving by winding down the war. Cutting costs by ending wasteful spending on the Afghanistan war certainly makes more sense than cutting costs in caring for our veterans.
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Afghanistan Weekly Reader: U.S. Spent $52 billion for Training and Equipping Afghan Security Forces
Published: February 24th, 2012
The US has spent around $86 billion on Afghanistan reconstruction efforts since 2002, according to a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. The majority of these funds, some $52 billion, is for training and equipping the Afghan security forces. The remaining $34 billion goes towards governance and development, counternarcotics efforts, and humanitarian aid.
What does $86 billion buy? Not much, it seems. A SIGAR auditor estimates that only 15% of US aid to Afghanistan makes it to the intended recipients. A whopping 70% – over $60 billion – is eaten up by overhead costs. The remaining $13 billion is lost to waste and corruption.
Ten years of war point to one thing: it’s time to rethink our Afghanistan policy. An effective strategy doesn’t have to be a costly strategy.
From ASG
2/22/12
Tracking Hidden War Costs
Afghanistan Study Group by Mary Kaszynski
The Department of Defense war funding request for 2013 is $88.5 billion. But war costs hidden in the rest of the federal budget true costs of war are hiddenARTICLES
2/20/12
The Real Defense Budget
The Atlantic by Steve Clemons
While everyone knows that the defense budget is large — even in the numbers that the public sees as the formally admitted figures by the Department of Defense — the truth is that when one scratches beneath the bureaucratic veneer, national security spending is much larger, nearly double the amount US citizens are told.2/21/12
War Funding Request Denotes 68,000 Troops Through Late 2013
FCNL by Matt Southworth
Looking at the fiscal year 2013 war funding request, you might think war is getting less expensive. Not quite. Funding overall is on the decline, yes, but the war in Afghanistan still costs $1 million per soldier, per year.OPINION
2/19/12
U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014
Washington Post by Ronald E. Neumann
The strategy of transition asks our commanders for large measures of resolve, discipline and courage. They have every right to expect clarity and resolve from their political leaders. President Obama needs to explain his strategy to Americans, not talk only about withdrawal dates.2/21/12
U.S. Should Consider an Earlier Exit From Afghanistan
Bloomberg Editorial
Over the last decade the U.S. has made an enduring point: Any nation that allows a terrorist attack on the U.S. from its soil faces a response that will be swift, brutal and relentless. Isn’t that enough?2/24/12
Why we need to get out of Afghanistan — now
Chicago Tribune by Mark Doyle
Many are criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan in 2013. They say it is too soon.
I say it is not soon enough. After spending the past year working in Afghanistan trying to account for billions of dollars spent there by U.S. taxpayers, I say why wait another year? Let’s bring our military and civilian personnel home — now. -
Tracking Hidden War Costs
Published: February 22nd, 2012
Mary Kaszynski
Afghanistan Study GroupHow much have the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost the American taxpayer? It seems like an easy question. Add up all those supplemental war appropriations from the Bush years and the overseas contingency operations, and you should have the answer.
It’s not that simple. The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. More than ten years later, we’re still at war, and we still don’t know how much we’ve spent on it. That says something about the Pentagon’s accounting practices—the Department of Defense still can’t complete an audit—and the way we budget for war in particular. Most importantly, it says something about accountability and transparency in government spending in general.
We recently tried to add up America’s war bill and encountered some difficulties just trying to get the right number. We looked at various agency budgets to locate line items that contribute to the cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our hope is to demonstrate that arriving at a firm number is a herculean task.
Defense War Budget – the primary costs of war should be in the Department of Defense Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account. However, all war costs are not in the OCO account – and everything in the OCO account is not for the war. Included in OCO is the cost of the military “reset”, which allocates monies for repairing and restoring equipment used during the war.
How much of the reset actually has to do with the war is unclear. The Congressional Research Service estimates that more than 40% of what the Army calls “reset” is used for things other than repair and replacement.
Defense Base Budget – Sometimes non-war costs are moved from the base to the war account to evade budget caps. Sometimes it goes the other way; In this year’s budget the administration moved about $10 billion in enduring operations costs to the base budget.
It’s hard to estimate just how much of the base defense budget goes towards the wars. The defense budget, excluding war funding, has grown significantly since 2001, which shows that some portion of the base defense budget can be attributed to the cost of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. How much? Economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates at least 25% of the base budget increase is due to the wars (The Three Trillion Dollar War, page 46). With an increase of $670 billion since 2001 in the base budget, that would mean an additional $168 billion in war costs.
Other Agencies – Since 2001, CRS estimates that State and USAID have spent $67 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan. These agencies will take on more as combat operations wind down, and war funding reflects this. State’s 2013 request for OCO (a new account in 2012) is $8.2 billion.State’s OCO account may be small, but that doesn’t mean following the money is any easier. Take state money for Afghanistan for example. State OCO includes $3.3 billion for the war in Afghanistan.
Associated Costs – There is much more to paying for war than the costs of ongoing operations. One big associated cost is caring for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Veterans Affairs budget has grown significantly over the past ten years, and it will continue to grow long after the wars are over.The cost of caring for veterans is never included in the Pentagon’s war estimate, but full-cost analyses commonly take this into account. The projected total cost of veterans’ health care and disability is $422 billion to $717 billion, according to a recent study by the Center for American Progress. The 2013 VA request is $140 billion.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are also a main driver of the national debt. In 2013, the payment on the national debt due to DOD war costs will be about $5.8 billion.* Stiglitz estimates that the wars are directly responsible for at least a quarter of the increase in the national debt – that’s over $2 trillion since 2003.
So how much have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost? The Department of Defense war budget (supplementals plus OCO) totals $1.2 trillion since 2001. But as you can see, DOD OCO is just the beginning. Once you start adding in all the hidden costs, the total is much, much greater.
*DOD OCO is approximately 2.3% of total government spending (88.5/3800). Payment on the debt in 2013 is $248 billion. Assuming war costs account for the same percentage of debt as total government spending, we have $248B*2.3%=$5.7B. See Winslow Wheeler’s calculation for the defense budget and payment on the debt: “Which Pentagon Numbers Are Real? You Decide!” -
Afghanistan Weekly Reader: $97 billion for another year of war
Published: February 16th, 2012
The defense budget is driving the news this week. The president’s request for fiscal year 2013, unveiled Monday, includes $89 billion in war costs for the Department of Defense, plus $8 billion for State – a total of $97 billion. Problems with this number are already starting to pop up. Funding for inefficient and unsustainable infrastructure projects continues in the 2013 request, as does the Pentagon’s habit of hiding non-war costs in the war budget.
Defense Secretary Panetta expects an agreement on the US presence in Afghanistan in the next few weeks. That may help clear up some questions about future war costs. But if this year’s war budget is any indication, war spending won’t be going down anytime soon.
From ASG
2/14/12
Capping War Costs at Only $450 Billion
Afghanistan Study Group by Mary Kaszynski
The president’s budget proposes a $450 billion cap on war spending over the next nine years. This is a step in the right direction, but the proposed cap is far too high, leaving plenty of room for unnecessary spending.ARTICLES
2/10/12
Defense budget magic
CNN by Libby Lewis
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta hasn’t revealed much so far about his department’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year. But he has offered a peek at some numbers, like this one: $88.4 billion for war funding…The war is expensive, true, but some defense budget experts say there may be also be some defense budget magic going on. It’s a magic made possible by two things.2/12/12
Risks of Afghan War Shift From Soldiers to Contractors
New York Times by Rod Norlund
Even dying is being outsourced here.
This is a war where traditional military jobs, from mess hall cooks to base guards and convoy drivers, have increasingly been shifted to the private sector. Many American generals and diplomats have private contractors for their personal bodyguards. And along with the risks have come the consequences: More civilian contractors working for American companies than American soldiers died in Afghanistan last year for the first time during the war.2/15/12
Pentagon hides $3 billion in budget accounting maneuver
Foreign Policy by Josh Rogin
The Pentagon’s new budget request moves $3 billion of military pay and benefits out of the base budget into the war budget in an accounting maneuver experts and congressional staffers say is meant to get around legally mandated budget caps and bolster the administration’s plan to cut the size of the Army and Marines.OPINION
2/14/12
450 Bases and It’s Not Over Yet
TomDispatch by Nick Turse
Whether the U.S. military will still be in Afghanistan in five or 10 years remains to be seen, but steps are currently being taken to make that possible. U.S. military publications, plans and schematics, contracting documents, and other official data examined by TomDispatch catalog hundreds of construction projects worth billions of dollars slated to begin, continue, or conclude in 2012. -
Capping War Costs at Only $450 Billion
Published: February 14th, 2012
The president’s budget plan for fiscal year 2013, unveiled yesterday, includes $96.7 billion for war funding ($88.5 billion for the Department of Defense and $8.2 for State – see page 89 of the budget). The Afghanistan war accounts for almost all of the request – $88.9 billion.
While the numbers themselves are interesting (interestingly high, that is), even more significant is the administration’s proposal to establish a cap on the war funds account:
Leaving OCO [overseas contingency operations, or war costs] funding unconstrained could allow future Administrations and Congresses to use it as a convenient vehicle to evade the fiscal discipline that the BCA [Budget Control Act of 2011] caps require elsewhere in the Budget. With the end of our military presence in Iraq, and as troops continue to draw down in Afghanistan, this Budget proposes a binding cap on OCO spending as well. From 2013 through 2021, the Budget limits OCO appropriations to $450 billion. [Emphasis added. See page 26 of the president’s budget.]
Before diving into the implications of the proposed cap, a couple of notes. First, the debt deal left a loophole for war costs, and that that loophole must be closed if policymakers are serious about getting nation’s fiscal house in order. Second, this is a cap, not a request. So $450 billion over the next nine years is a maximum; costs may not get that high.
These caveats aside, take another look at the cap itself. The proposal would limit war costs to $450 over the next nine years, an average of $50 billion per year. That might seem like a good deal, until you remember that we have spent $570 billion on the Afghanistan war since 2001. Assuming most of the proposed $450 billion would be for Afghanistan, that would bring the cost of the war to over $1 trillion.
Remember too that the Pentagon has announced plans to transition to local security forces by mid-2013. If the US combat role ends in 2013, what could possibly account for $450 billion in war costs through 2021?
A couple of explanations come to mind. First, the drawdown plan for 2013 and beyond is still unclear. US troops’ combat role may be ending, but who knows how long the training mission will last, and how many troops will be left in Afghanistan to see it through. Estimates range from 5,000 to 30,000, according to Afghanistan’s former deputy interior minister.
The second explanation isn’t much better. Troop levels alone are unlikely to account for $450 billion, meaning there will still be plenty of room for shady budgeting. Federal budgeters intend to keep doing what they’ve been doing all along, hiding non-war costs in the war budget. This has happened before – in 2012 alone some $7 billion was moved from the base defense budget to the war account. And it’s likely to happen again, with a cap as high as $450 billion.
Capping war costs is a good step towards fiscal responsibility in the defense budget. But this cap still leaves plenty of room for unnecessary spending. More serious efforts to restrain spending are necessary.
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Afghanistan Weekly Reader: Another $88 Billion, For What?
Published: February 9th, 2012
Military leaders like to tell us that we’re making progress in Afghanistan. Some politicians and pundits say that if we just stay the course, leave the troops there, then we might “succeed.”
But it seems that the outlook in Afghanistan isn’t as rosy as we have been lead to believe. A new intelligence estimate calls the war a stalemate. A NATO report details pervasive corruption in Afghanistan. And now a US Army officer is speaking out about how what he saw in Afghanistan in no way matches what officials have been telling the American public.
As these facts pile up, it becomes harder and harder to justify the bloated war budget. $120 billion in 2011, $110 billion in 2012, and now the Defense Department wants $88 billion for war costs in 2013. We keep spending, but by all accounts we’re not getting much out of it. How much evidence do we need before coming up with a smarter strategy?
From ASG
2/7/12
Do You Want To Spend Another $88 Billion In Afghanistan?
Afghanistan Study Group by Mary Kaszynski
The price tag for the war in Afghanistan – $88 billion if the 2013 request is fully funded – will include a war that the majority of Americans do not support, plus some equipment that the Army doesn’t need, and who knows what else. The war may be winding down, but the Defense Department’s shady accounting practices continue, at the expense of the American taxpayer.ARTICLES
2/6/12
In Afghan War, Officer Becomes a Whistle-Blower
New York Times by Scott Shane
On his second yearlong deployment to Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis traveled 9,000 miles, patrolled with American troops in eight provinces and returned in October of last year with a fervent conviction that the war was going disastrously and that senior military leaders had not leveled with the American public.OPINION
2/2/12
Could and Should U.S. End Combat Role in Afghanistan Early?
PBS NewsHour Interview with
Gen. Jack Keane and Celeste Ward Gventer (University of Texas)
Gventer: I think we need to step back and ask the question, fighting season to fight for what, and who are we fighting, and to what end?…It’s not clear who our enemy is or what another fighting season or two more fighting seasons or 10 more fighting seasons is really going to achieve, at the expense of American lives and treasure.2/2/12
Romney Playing With Fire on Afghanistan
National Journal by Alex Roarty
Mitt Romney’s sharp criticism Wednesday of President Obama’s newly planned troop withdrawal in Afghanistan raises a thorny question for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee: Why is he intent on aligning himself with such an unpopular position? The answer might lie in a candidate willing to lose a battle to win the war.2/3/12
Afghanistan 2013: America’s Next Groove
The Atlantic by Steve Clemons
Former State Department official and US Marine Matthew Hoh, now a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy, and I had a very good discussion with Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball about Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s comments that the US would cease combat operations in Afghanistan in 2013 — rather than the end of 2014. -
Do you want to spend another $88 Billion in Afghanistan?
Published: February 7th, 2012
Mary Kaszynski
Afghanistan Study GroupOf the 90,000 troops currently stationed in Afghanistan, 22,000 are scheduled to come home this summer. The 2013 drawdown plan hasn’t been revealed, but Sec. Panetta’s announcement that combat operations may end in 2013 seems to indicate a faster drawdown than previously expected.
The war in Afghanistan may be winding down faster than expected, but it continues to cost billions. One week from today the president will unveil a spending plan for 2013. His request is expected to include $525 billion for the Department of Defense, plus an additional $88 billion for war costs.
We’ve mentioned before that this number seems suspiciously high, considering the pace of the drawdown, We’re not the only ones who think so. At the budget briefing two weeks ago a reporter noted that the cut from last year’s war costs to this year “doesn’t seem like it’s that much of a reduction” and asked DOD officials to “give us some sense of what that’s for, that 88.4 billion?” JCS Chair General Dempsey’s response: “For recapitalization, for reconstitution, we’ve always said that it would take years following the end of the conflict to recapitalize the force. And some of the OCO costs are caught up in that. ”
Dempsey’s answer is not that surprising. The need to “recapitalize” or “reset” the force after a decade of war is a favorite line for those who want to keep defense spending high. Trimming the defense budget, we are told, would hollow out our military forces and leave us open to all sorts of dangers.
The problem with this argument is that it’s simply not true. A new report from the Congressional Research Service says, in a typically understated way, “it can be argued that the use of the term “hollow force” is inappropriate under present circumstances.”
Recent defense spending trends confirm this. Over the past ten years, the US has spent close to $1 trillion on defense procurement, according to a recent report from the Stimson Center. $233 billion, or 22% of that total, came from the war costs account. Thanks to the war funding, the Army was able to upgrade most of its combat and support vehicles – and then some. The GAO estimates that over 40% of the funds the Army requested for the “reset” went to programs that “although beneficial to the Army, do not directly relate to replacing lost equipment or repairing worn or damaged systems.”
War spending has consistently been given a special status, exempt from the scrutiny applied to other areas of government spending. This is unlikely to change in the near future. In fact, since the Budget Control Act of 2011 exempts war funding from spending caps, it is even more likely that non-war expenses will find their way into the war account.
What does this mean for the American taxpayer? It means that the price tag for the war in Afghanistan – $88 billion if the 2013 request is fully funded – will include a war that the majority of Americans do not support, plus some equipment that the Army doesn’t need, and who knows what else. The war may be winding down, but the Defense Department’s shady accounting practices continue, at the expense of the American taxpayer.
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Despite Panetta’s Comment Afghanistan War Budget for 2013 is $90 Billion
Published: February 2nd, 2012
Defense Secretary Panetta made headlines this week for commenting that the US may end combat operations in Afghanistan “hopefully by the mid to latter part of 2013.” Is this the sign we have been hoping for? Maybe not.
Sec. Panetta went on to say “we’ve got to stick to the Lisbon strategy” – meaning the deadline for transitioning to local forces is still December 2014. This summer 22,000 troops, all that remains of the surge, will come home from Afghanistan. It is, however, unclear how many of the remaining 68,000 will be withdrawn in 2013. And the plan for after 2013 is just as obscure.
This year we spent $120 billion on the Afghanistan War. In addition, the administration is requesting almost $90 billion for 2013. Our current fiscal environment demands that these costs be reduced as rapidly as possible. Inconsistent and misleading statements from the administration on the Afghanistan drawdown timeline will not change this fact.
From ASG
1/31/12
Average American Weekly Income: $1,200. Weekly War Costs: $1,800,000,000
Afghanistan Study Group by Mary Kaszynski
Americans now see that the few benefits of the war in Afghanistan are not worth the enormous costs. At a time when many American families are struggling, the amount of money spent on the war in Afghanistan doesn’t make sense.ARTICLES
2/1/12
Panetta Says U.S. to End Afghan Combat Role as Soon as 2013
New York Times by Elisabeth Blumiller
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Wednesday that American forces would step back from a combat role there as early as mid-2013, more than a year before all American troops are scheduled to come home.OPINION
1/26/12
The Afghan divide
LA Times by Sarah Chayes
How should we measure success in Afghanistan? It’s a crucial question, but there isn’t much agreement on an answer.2/1/12
Obama’s Faster, Smarter Afghan Exit
The Daily Beast by Les Gelb
With this strategy, the administration accomplishes three goals: (1) U.S. troops are removed from combat earlier, reducing lives lost and cost; (2) U.S. troops return home earlier; and (3) both security and political risks are made manageable.
