© Baz Ratner / Reuters
Rapporten fra Cost of War Project, som er udført af Brown University's Watson Institute, talte alle budgetudgifter til krige som Amerika har ført i Afghanistan, Irak, Pakistan og Syrien såvel som til terrorbekæmpelse.
Tallet de $4.79 billioner omfatter fremtidige forpligtelser til at bruge budgetpenge fra til og med 2053, projekteret fremtidige udgifter til krigsveteraner, renter allerede betalt for penge lånt til krigsbestræbelserne og andre relevante udgifter. Dette er $300 milliarder højere end hvad projektet rapporterede i 2015.
Kommentar: Denne artikel er delvis oversat til dansk af sott.net fra: Staggering cost of US post-9/11 wars approaching $5 trillion
The estimate does not include interest the US is expected to pay on war loans, but says the current operational cost may pale in comparison.
"Interest costs for overseas contingency operations spending alone are projected to add more than $1 trillion to the national debt by 2023. By 2053, interest costs will be at least $7.9 trillion unless the US changes the way it pays for the wars," wrote report author Neta Crawford, professor of political science at Boston University and co-director of the Costs of War Project.
The figure also excludes costs that are difficult to estimate such as the spending on veterans by local and state budgets. Neither does it put a dollar cost on loss of human life or the toll the wars take on the US economy. The former was detailed in an earlier report published in August. The macroeconomic impact is addressed briefly and is said to have "cost tens of thousands of jobs, affected the ability of the US to invest in infrastructure and probably led to increased interest costs on borrowing, not to mention greater overall federal indebtedness."
The paper details other estimates of the cost of war by US officials and scholars, saying that they were more conservative.
"This paper's estimate of current and future costs of war greatly exceeds pre-war and early estimates. Indeed, optimistic assumptions and a tendency to underestimate and undercount war costs have, from the beginning, been characteristic of the estimates of the budgetary costs and the fiscal consequences of these wars," the report said.
Kommentar: Tænk hvis de penge var gået til at hjælpe lande og knytte bånd imellem dem, istedet for at tyranisere lande og tvinge dem til at være vassaller af det amerikanske imperium. Vi ser resultatet af en poneriseret civilisation, hvor psykopater kommer til magten og inficerer hele civilisationen med deres sygelige livssyn.
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