Bush Wants To Increase Size of Military To Achieve Peace By Staying Engaged in a Long War

TECHNORATI TAGS: Congress, Iraq, war, Iraq war, Afghanistan, budget, military, global war on terror

Today's WaPo has an article titled "Bush to Expand Size of Military":

President Bush said today that he plans to expand the size of the U.S. military to meet the challenges of a long-term global war against terrorists, a response to warnings that sustained deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the armed forces to near the breaking point.
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The Army has already temporarily increased its size from 482,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 to 507,000 today and soon to 512,000. But the Army wants to make that 30,000-soldier increase permanent and then grow an additional 7,000 soldiers or more per year. The Army estimates that every 10,000 additional soldiers will cost about $1.2 billion a year.
[..]
In describing his decision today, Bush tied it to the broader struggle against Islamic extremists around the world rather than Iraq specifically. "It is an accurate reflection that this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while and that we're going to need a military that's capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace," he said.

Asked about Powell's assessment, Bush chose a different term. "I haven't heard the word 'broken,' " he said, "but I've heard the word, 'stressed.' . . . We need to reset our military. There's no question the military has been used a lot. And the fundamental question is, will Republicans and Democrats be able to work with the administration to assure our military and the American people that we will position our military so that it is ready and able to stay engaged in a long war?"

So many questions, so little time. First thing I notice is that in the next to last paragraph, Bush says, "It is an accurate reflection that this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while and that we're going to need a military that's capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace." However, in the last paragraph, he says, "... There's no question the military has been used a lot. And the fundamental question is, will Republicans and Democrats be able to work with the administration to assure our military and the American people that we will position our military so that it is ready and able to stay engaged in a long war?"

I certainly take Bush's point that the 55% of Americans who want U.S. troops in Iraq withdrawn within a year, or the 88% who oppose increasing the number of troops in Iraq, will be very relieved and happy to hear that a long war is assured, if we make our military larger. But I'm confused, and need to ask: Does Bush want peace, or does he want war? First he says he wants to achieve peace; then he says he wants to stay engaged in a long war. Which is it, then? Does he think peace and war are the same thing?

Another question: How much is all this going to cost?

A force structure expansion would accelerate the already-rising costs of war. The administration is drafting a supplemental request for more than $100 billion in additional funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on top of the $70 billion already approved for this fiscal year, according to U.S. officials. That would be over 50 percent more than originally projected for fiscal 2007, making it by far the most costly year since the 2003 invasion.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress has approved more than $500 billion for terrorism-related operations, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. An additional $100 billion would bring overall expenditures to $600 billion, exceeding those for the Vietnam War, which, adjusted for inflation, cost $549 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.

And if you think this is a lot of money, how does $2 trillion sound to you?

The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion (£1.1 trillion), up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.

The study, which expanded on traditional estimates by including such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concluded that the US government is continuing to underestimate the cost of the war.
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Mr Stiglitz told the Guardian that despite the staggering costs laid out in their paper the economists had erred on the side of caution. "Our estimates are very conservative, and it could be that the final costs will be much higher. And it should be noted they do not include the costs of the conflict to either Iraq or the UK." In 2003, as US and British troops were massing on the Iraq border, Larry Lindsey, George Bush's economic adviser, suggested the costs might reach $200bn. The White House said the figure was far too high, and the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, said Iraq could finance its own reconstruction.

Three years later, with more than 140,000 US soldiers on the ground in Iraq, even the $200bn figure was very low, according to the two economists.

Congress has appropriated $251bn for military operations, and the Congressional budget office has now estimated that under one plausible scenario the Iraq war will cost over $230bn more in the next 10 years. According to Mr Stiglitz and Ms Bilmes, whose paper is due to be presented to the Allied Social Sciences Association in Boston tomorrow, there are substantial future costs not included in the Congressional calculations.

For instance, the latest Pentagon figures show that more than 16,000 military personnel have been wounded in Iraq. Due to improvements in body armour, there has been an unusually high number of soldiers who have survived major wounds such as brain damage, spinal injuries and amputations. The economists predict the cost of lifetime care for the thousands of troops who have suffered brain injuries alone could run to $35bn. Taking in increased defence spending as a result of the war, veterans' disability payments and demobilisation costs, the economists predict the budgetary costs of the war alone could approach $1 trillion.

The report that published these figures came out at the beginning of 2006. But now the authors of that report -- Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, an economist who teaches at Columbia University -- say $2 trillion is far too low:

In January, we estimated that the true cost of the Iraq war could reach $2 trillion, a figure that seemed shockingly high. But since that time, the cost of the war -- in both blood and money -- has risen even faster than our projections anticipated. More than 2,500 American troops have died and close to 20,000 have been wounded since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. And the $2 trillion number -- the sum of the current and future budgetary costs along with the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by political uncertainty in the Middle East -- now seems low.

One source of difficulty in getting an accurate picture of the direct cost of prosecuting the war is the way the government does its accounting. With "cash accounting," income and expenses are recorded when payments are actually made -- for example, what you pay off on your credit card today -- not the amount outstanding. By contrast, with "accrual accounting," income and expenses are recorded when the commitment is made. But, as Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee, notes, "The budget of the United States uses cash accounting, and only the tiniest businesses in America are even allowed to use cash accounting. Why? Because it gives you a very distorted picture."

The distortion is particularly acute in the case of the Iraq war. The cash costs of feeding, housing, transporting and equipping U.S. troops, paying for reconstruction costs, repairs and replacement parts and training Iraqi forces are just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Costs incurred, but not yet paid, dwarf what is being spent now -- even when future anticipated outlays are converted back into 2006 dollars.

Want another way of looking at it? Congress estimated back in September that the Iraq war -- just the Iraq war -- is devouring $2 billion a week.

I want to know: How do I get some of that gravy? Even more to the point, what do single moms struggling to survive and feed their children on $500 a month have to do to get even a fraction of that $2 billion a week with no accountability required?