[A continuing series by guest author Neta Crawford about why it so difficult to accurately assess the true costs of war.]
The third reason the official numbers are low is the tendency to focus on what has already been spent, forgetting future war-related obligations. But of course, paying for the wars will not end when the last soldiers come home.
The two most expensive future costs for the federal budget are future interest on war spending, and the costs of veterans care (medical and disability payments). Economist Ryan Edwards estimates that interest payments on appropriations through this year for both wars will be about $1 trillion to 2020. It would be nice if the war related debt was paid by then.
But more expensive and difficult to predict are the costs of caring for the more than 2.2 million veterans of these wars over the next 40 years. Linda Bilmes estimates that the VA will spend between $600 billion but likely closer to $900 billion for the more than 1 million discharged through last year. When all are home, the estimates and the costs will rise.
Why will the costs of veterans’ care be so high? First, these veterans will need to draw more medical and disability care than veterans of previous wars because they face more and in many cases more complex injuries than the past. This is in part due to advances in trauma medicine.
In World War II, the ratio of injured to dead was 3 to 1; in Iraq the ratio is about 8 to 1. More than 600,000 veterans have already been treated at the VA and more than 600,000 have claimed disability.
As these veterans — dealing with an average of more than 5 medical conditions — age, their injures will often become more complex and expensive to treat.
If we add the past spending and estimates for future federal expenditures, the total for Iraq alone is between $2.7-3.3 trillion. If we add the costs of Afghanistan, the total rises far higher.
Neta C. Crawford is a Professor of Political Science at Boston University and co-director of the Costs of War study www.costsofwar.org