Brown University Project -- Cost of War(Excerpts from Summary) Over 929,000 people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence. Many times more have died indirectly in these wars, due to ripple effects like malnutrition, damaged infrastructure and environmental degradation. Over 387,000 civilians have been killed in direct violence by all parties to these conflicts. Over 7,050 U.S. soldiers have died in the wars. We do not know the full extent of how many U.S. service members returning from these wars became ill or were injured while deployed. Many deaths and injuries among U.S. contractors have not been reported as required by law, but it is likely that approximately 8,000 have been killed. 38 million people have been displaced by the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines. The U.S. federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and elsewhere totals about $8 trillion. This does not include future interest costs on borrowing for the wars. The U.S. government is conducting counter-terror activities in 85 countries, vastly expanding this war across the globe. The wars have been accompanied by violations of human rights and civil liberties in the U.S. and abroad. The post-9/11 wars have contributed significantly to climate change. The Defense Department is one of the world's top greenhouse gas emitters. The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades with some costs, such as the financial costs of U.S. veterans' care, not peaking until mid-century. Most U.S. government funding of reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has gone towards arming security forces in both countries. Much of the money allocated to humanitarian relief and rebuilding civil society has been lost to fraud, waste and abuse. The ripple effects on the U.S. economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases. Pentagon spending has totaled over $14 trillion since the start of the war in Afghanistan, with one-third to one-half of the total going to military contractors. A large portion of these contracts -- one-quarter to one-third of all Pentagon contracts in recent years -- have gone to just five major corporations: Lockheed
Martin, The $75 billion in Pentagon contracts received by Lockheed Martin in fiscal year 2020 is well over one and one-half times the entire budget for the State Department and Agency for International Development for that year, which totaled $44 billion. Weapons makers have spent $2.5 billion on lobbying over the past two decades, employing, on average, over 700 lobbyists per year over the past five years. That is more than one for every member of Congress. Numerous companies took advantage of wartime conditions -- which require speed of delivery and often involve less rigorous oversight -- to overcharge the government or engage in outright fraud. In 2011, the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated that waste, fraud and abuse had totaled between $31 billion and $60 billion. As the U.S. reduces the size of its military footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan, exaggerated estimates of the military challenges posed by China have become the new rationale of choice in arguments for keeping the Pentagon budget at historically high levels. Military contractors will continue to profit from this inflated spending. The report Cost of Militarization is available here.
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