I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, Speech in Ottawa, January 10, 1946
Tag: War
Lesley Stahl Interview With Last Surviving Nuremberg Prosecutor, Benjamin Ferencz
This entire 60 Minutes interview with Benjamin Ferencz is well worth watching.
Lesley Stahl: We’ve had Rwanda, we’ve had Bosnia. You’re not getting very far.
Benjamin Ferencz: Well, don’t say that. People get discouraged. They should remember, from me, it takes courage not to be discouraged.
Lesley Stahl: Did anybody ever say that you’re naive?
Benjamin Ferencz: Of course. Some people say I’m crazy.
Lesley Stahl: Are you naive here?
Benjamin Ferencz: Well, if it’s naive to want peace instead of war, let ’em make sure they say I’m naive. Because I want peace instead of war. If they tell me they want war instead of peace, I don’t say they’re naive, I say they’re stupid. Stupid to an incredible degree to send young people out to kill other young people they don’t even know, who never did anybody any harm, never harmed them. That is the current system. I am naive? That’s insane.
Rudyard Kipling’s “Epitaphs of the War”
COMMON FORM
If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.A DEAD STATESMAN
(via The Poetry Foundation)
I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
Is War Ever Justified?
A short YouTube video featuring Bryan Caplan and Jan Ting debating whether war is ever justified.
Total Cost of America’s Wars
The other day I ran across a story about government spending that made me wonder how much the United States has spent on the numerous wars it has waged over the last couple centuries. Well, it turns out that in 2010 Stephen Daggett of the Congressional Research Service prepared a report (155k PDF) estimating the military costs of all American Wars beginning with the Revolutionary War and extending to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Based on Daggett’s estimates, U.S. war spending looks something like this:
Military Costs of U.S. Wars, 1775-2010
War Years Total Cost (2011 Constant $) Peak Year of War Spending War Cost as % of GDP
in Peak Year of War Spending
American Revolution 1775-1783 2,407 million NA
War of 1812 1812-1815 1,553 million 1813 2.2%
Mexican War 1846-1849 2,376 million 1847 1.4%
Civil War: Union 1861-1865 59,631 million 1865 11.3%
Civil War: Confederacy 1861-1865 20,111 million NA
Spanish American War 1898-1899 9,034 million 1899 1.1%
World War I 1917-1921 334 billion 1919 13.6%
World War II 1941-1945 4,104 billion 1945 35.8%
Korea 1950-1953 341 billion 1952 4.2%
Vietnam 1965-1975 738 billion 1968 2.3%
Persian Gulf War 1990-1991 102 billion 1991 0.3%
Afghanistan (includes all Operation Freedom actions) 2001-2010 1,147 billion 2008 1.2%
Iraq 2003-2010 784 billion 2008 1.0%
Daggett notes a number of challenges with estimating total war costs. Although the costs are expressed in FY 2011 dollars, comparing costs accurately over such a long period of time is difficult at best. With more recent wars, what counts as a direct war expenditure has changed over time and so earlier wars such as Vietnam likely underreport their true cost.
On the other hand, even for current wars the dollar estimate is for ongoing combat and support actions and does “not reflect costs of veterans’ benefits, interest on war-related debt, or assistance to allies.” With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, some studies estimate that total veteran benefits costs will actually be large than the cost of the wars themselves.