Via Mark Thoma comes this CBO report totaling "the funding provided through fiscal year 2007 for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other activities associated with the war on terrorism, as well as for related costs incurred by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for medical care, disability compensation, and survivors’ benefits." The trend is telling:
The numbers are striking. 2001 and 2002 are straight efforts against terrorists, against the Taliban, in pursuit of those who harmed us on 9/11. 2003 and forward are those costs, plus Iraq. And Iraq's costs are huge. Imagine a strategy aimed at global jihadism which used the same resources, the same billions, to track terrorist networks, to improve intelligence gathering, to deploy soft power and humanitarian efforts aimed at improving our image, to increase financial incentives for Middle East powers to play a constructive role in the Israel/Palestine peace process, etc, etc, etc.
Instead, that money, those hundreds of billions, have funded a failed war, subsidized the deaths of thousands, destroyed our image in the Muslim world, harmed our global moral authority, recruited terrorists and trained them in urban operations, weakened our military and exposed the limits of our power. That is what we have spent it on. That is what we have bought.
