Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Chart of the Day: The Cost of the "War on Terror"

From Mercatus Center, via Forbes:

A recent report from the Congressional Research Service, which examines the cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other global “War on Terror” operations since 9/11, calculates a cumulative (fiscal year 2001 through fiscal year 2014) nominal price tag of $1.6 trillion. Adding the war funding for fiscal year 2015 that was passed in December pushes the total to almost $1.7 trillion. When it comes to funding national defense, policymakers tend to ignore war costs so an accurate assessment on the burden on taxpayer of overseas military ventures is increasingly important as pressure mounts to increase the Pentagon’s regular “base” budget.
As the following chart shows, the vast majority of the funding has been allocated to the Department of Defense ($1.562 trillion). The State Department and related foreign aid efforts received $101 billion and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, $17 billion.
$1.681 trillion.  For what?  Now we've got people wetting their pants that we have to kill ISIS because they are evil.  Fuck that.  Some other evil bastards will come along when we kill a bunch of civilians in our war on ISIS. Let's just shut the hell up about the "war on terror" and leave folks in the rest of the world to deal with the fuckheads in their own neighborhoods.  We'll be fine.

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