[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today we welcome guest author Neta C. Crawford, for the first in a series about the true costs of the Iraq war. As the U.S. enters “tax season,” it is good to be reminded about the magnitude of our country’s financial commitment to war.]
Americans deserve an accurate accounting of the true toll of the Iraq war in both blood and treasure. We may get it if we recall that war is almost always more expensive and more difficult than a war’s boosters tell us. Anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is repainting history.
It is perhaps hard to remember now, but Bush administration officials told Americans before the Iraq war that it would cost $50-60 billion. Bush’s economic adviser Larry Lindsay was fired for saying the Iraq war could cost more, $100-200 billion.
They made no estimate of the thousands–now hundreds of thousands–who have died or been injured and the millions displaced in Iraq.
President Obama suggested last summer that Iraq had cost the U.S. 1 trillion. But there are lots of figures being cited, ranging as high as $4-6 trillion. Why were the pre-war estimates so low?
The reason the pre-war estimates were so low is the simple fact that the Bush Administration over-estimated the utility of force, believing that Iraqis would be easily defeated and would welcome externally imposed regime change.
But governments often underestimate the difficulty of war to achieve political ends. The Bush administration was optimistic, choosing to believe a best-case scenario when history suggests such scenarios are more often than not unrealistic. Killing people and occupying their country always produces resistance.
Why now, is it so hard to give a firm accounting of the dollar cost at this juncture? There are four basic reasons and it turns out they are related to the optimistic biases that preceded the war.
Neta C. Crawford is a Professor of Political Science at Boston University and co-director of the Costs of War study www.costsofwar.org