The Price of War

In less than two days, America’s media has already began to tally the cost of the military conflict in Libya and according to Megan Scully’s article for the National Journal titled Costs of Libya Operation Already Piling Up the numbers are quite large.  She reports that “Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said on Monday that the U.S. costs could “easily pass the $1 billion mark on this operation, regardless of how well things go” She warns “In a report released earlier this month, Harrison estimated that the initial stages of taking out Qaddafi’s coastal air defenses could ultimately cost coalition forces between $400 million and $800 million. “Harrison initially estimated that maintaining a coastal no-fly zone after those initial strikes would cost in the range of $30 million to $100 million per week.”  She then proceeds to explain that “On the first day of strikes alone, U.S.-led forces launched 112 long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, which cost about $1 million to $1.5 million apiece, from ships stationed off the Libyan coast. That totaled $112 million to $168 million. The U.S. military has tapped its B-2 bombers as well as F-15 and F-16 fighter jets to strike a number of targets, undoubtedly forcing an immediate uptick in the military’s operations and maintenance expenditures, including fuel costs.  It generally costs $10,000 per hour, including maintenance and fuel, to operate F-15s and F-16s. Those costs do not include the payloads dropped from the aircraft. The B-2s dropped 45 Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMS, which are 2,000-pound bombs that cost between $30,000 and $40,000 apiece to replace.  On the personnel front, special pay for soldiers involved in the operation will kick in immediately.”

Just looking and reading this article you would think that it might just have been a mistake and a serious waste of money to engage in this conflict but then you would not have the whole story and one can only hope that many free-thinkers like to have the full story before they make a judgment.  I am reminded of the news I heard about Senator Richard Lugar, R-Ind., saying something about budget deficits which begs the question of why now are you and others so concerned.  It was mentioned in the same article above about Defense Department request for 159 billion to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, take a few minutes to multiply 159 billion times 6 and tell me if that is not close to if not over half our current deficit.  This would have given us 4 years to finish up in Afghanistan and 2 years in Iraq.   While many “bean-counters” are looking at the cost of equipment and military personnel pay, they tend to forget the most precious of numbers for calculation and that is the loss of life.  How much is a life worth?  Is it worth one of those Tomahawk cruise missiles or several of those 2,000 pound bombs?  

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