The Cost of War

We often hear that the cost of the Iraq war is too high. The projected financial cost of the war was a major point of discussion at the outset of the war, and today the anti-war movement continue to lament the economic burden. This month Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes presented a paper that expands on traditional budgetary estimates by folding in to the calculation indirect costs such as long-term health care for the injured and oil price increases estimated to be related to the war.

Many in the anti-war camp hail such efforts to calculate the "real costs" of the war. But, for once, the National Review gets it right. Even the highest estimates for Iraq War expenditure cannot win the political argument over whether this is a war worth fighting. Historically, war has been a very costly financial undertaking, with WWII, for example, demanding a shocking 130% of one year's GDP before it was over. Americans have yet to experience anything even resembling the economic outlay required for WWII. The question of whether the cost of a war is too high can only be answered, of course, by examining the denominator: the aims and principles of the war. To know whether the war is worth it, we have to first understand what it is. Efforts such as that by Stigliz and Bilmes, to assign numerical value to political factors not traditionally deemed costs of war, suffer from the same weakness as most of today's anti-war arguments: they hope to provide a pragmatic basis for opposing the war, without winning the political argument as to why this war isn't worth fighting.

Such efforts are bound to fail. As Bowyer put it for National Review Online, "any attempt to discredit this war based on its effect on the U.S. economy is an unnecessary distraction." He couldn't be more right. The cost of the war is neither here nor there--no matter what the number, the right war might be worth fighting. Let's elevate the war discussion from a pragmatic question of resource-allocation to the real one: what are we fighting for?