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[quote=Anonymous]Paul Krugman, Nobel prize winning economist, has a lengthy article today about, how this unjustified war is such a waste of money destroying lives and infrastructure....

[quote]	
War Is Expensive for the Little People
Operation Epic Fury will cost billions that could have been put to much better use

On Sunday, according to the U.S. military, Kuwaiti forces shot down three U.S. F-15s in a “friendly fire” incident. Fortunately, the crews were able to safely eject and survived. The sad truth is that such incidents are common in modern war. One of the highest-ranking U.S. officers to die in World War II, General Lesley McNair, was killed in Normandy by U.S. bombs, not the Germans.

The shocking aspect of the story is the value of the equipment destroyed: A new F-15 costs U.S. taxpayers $97 million. So that’s almost $300 million lost in seconds. And we should think about what could have been done with that money other than launch a war without a clear plan or an exit strategy.

There are many reasons to be disturbed by Operation Epic Fury. Donald Trump has taken America to war, not only without Congressional authorization, but without even trying to make a case to the American people. Other than the hope that Iranians will rise up and overthrow the Ayatollahs’ regime, the war has no clear plan for either victory or exit. This strongly suggests that the rush to war was a Trump ego tantrum rather than a carefully planned campaign. And although it would be a great boon to the world if the Iranian people were able to liberate themselves from this evil regime, as with any war there are huge risks of unforeseen consequences, including to the world economy.

One of the reasons to be disturbed by this war is the extraordinary amount of money the U.S. government is either laying out now or will have to lay out in the future to replace the spent munitions.

The modern American way of war is extremely capital-intensive, deploying massive amounts of equipment while putting relatively few people in harm’s way. This has been true ever since World War II, when FDR rejected calls to recruit an immense army and chose instead to fight what Phillips O’Brien calls a “machine-intensive, infantry light war.” That’s a rational approach, given how rich our nation is and how averse it is to casualties. It’s certainly a lot more rational than Pete Hegseth’s talk about “warrior ethos” — are soldiers supposed to flex their biceps at attacking drones?

The other problem is that U.S.-style war is incredibly expensive — so much so that the cost becomes a serious concern even for a nation as wealthy as America.

Linda Bilmes of Harvard’s Kennedy School estimates that Trump’s largely unsuccessful bombing campaign last year against the Iran-backed Islamist Houthis in Yemen — a far softer target than Iran itself — cost between $2.76 billion and $4.95 billion. Operation Midnight Hammer, Trump’s one-day strike against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities, cost between $2.04 billion and $2.26 billion.
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