Where in the World is God? by Hope Raymond

Author:Hope Raymond
Language: eng
Format: epub
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Monetary Costs

Throughout recent U.S. wars the monetary cost per service member per year has increased dramatically[827], though the total cost of wars has steadily decreased[828] —in dollars, in percentage of GDP, in number of troops involved and in number of deaths. Two other big changes are the shift from using draftees to volunteer enlistments, and no more full-scale mobilization of armed forces, as in World War II.[829]

When an $83.4 billion war supplemental spending bill was presented to Congress in May 2009, critics arose on every front, reflecting “a discomfort that this is a one-way ticket to a quagmire.”[830] Some worried that with no benchmarks to measure progress in Afghanistan and no exit strategy, the conflict was left open-ended. Others called for a much greater proportion of the funding directed to humanitarian aid and reconstruction.

The U.S. Iraq war cost was “$5,000 a second, $434 million every day. Seven days a week, no weekends off, no vacations. $12 billion every month.”

-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

Some liberal democrats who opposed the bill were also strong supporters of Obama and were reluctant to vote against this early test of his national security strategy. Hoping to appease the opposition, both the Administration and Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged that future war expenditures would be part of the regular budget. “My message to my members is: ‘This is it,’” Pelosi said. “There won’t be any more war supplementals.”[831]

Even the Pentagon became worried about rising costs of the war. Military pay, which constitutes about one-quarter of defense spending, had steadily risen 42 percent since 2002. Rising personnel costs could “dramatically affect the readiness of the department,” said the undersecretary of defense for personnel[832]. Yet military officials noted that the generous compensation packages enabled them to meet all their annual recruiting goals in 2009 for the first time since the all-volunteer force was established in 1973.[833]

Congress was left with a dilemma, voiced by a member of the House Armed Services Committee: “We end up with a false choice—are we going to fund weapons or are we going to fund people? The reality is, we need both.[834]”[835]

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