Long time readers of Econbrowser know that I have tabulating US direct outlays in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and operations thereafter. Imagine my surprise when in The Commander in Chief Forum, Donald J. Trump stated that we’d spent three trillion dollars. This prompted me to refer to actual, real-world, data. As far as I can tell, three trillion is not a number that exists in reality.
Here’s the quote from WaPo:
TRUMP: …look at Iraq, what happened, how badly that was handled. And then when President Obama took over, likewise, it was a disaster. …
… we’re the only ones, we go in, we spend $3 trillion, we lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then, Matt, what happens is, we get nothing. You know, it used to be to the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil.
The cumulative spending is tabulated at $1.6 trillion. It is possible that there are some expenditures Mr. Trump has in mind as belonging in the total that are omitted from the above tabulation, but it is hard to think that those expenditures sum to $1.4 trillion.
For pictures of cumulative real expenditures through FY2012, see this post.
That figure usually includes all the prospective medical/disability/retirement of veterans and casualties.
Lord: Proof by assertion?
Brown University estimates the costs through 2014 at $3.3 trillion.
http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/figures/2014/Summary%20Costs%20of%20War%20NC%20JUNE%2026%202014.pdf
Steven Kopits: I believe the numbers, but the astute reader will note that the numbers pertain to Iraq plus Afghanistan plus Homeland expenditures. Not just Iraq, which was Mr. Trump’s point.
Menzie,
The question that Trump was responding to was “Mr. Trump, over the past 15 years, a lot of U.S. troops have bled and died securing towns and provinces from Iraq to Afghanistan, only to have insurgent groups like ISIS spring back the moment we leave.” It wasn’t just about Iraq. Trump’s numbers are right.
Trump is usually right about his numbers. Recall that you also took issue with Trump’s statement in one of the debates bout the length of the Great Wall. As I pointed out to you in the comments, Trump was right about that too.
Rick Stryker: If you look at the transcript, he was clearly referring to Iraq only. The link to the transcript is in the post.
About the Great Wall, as I recall, you never responded to my point that at no time were there extant 13,000 miles of standing walls. If you want to count a mile of wall under a mile of wall (as the Chinese authorities did in this tabulation), well feel free.
You are desperate these days, aren’t you?
Menzie,
The question to Trump was prefaced with the observation that given all the blood we’ve spent from Afghanistan to Iraq on the war on terror, ISIS comes in as soon as we leave. The question was, what is Trump’s plan to deal with ISIS and how would he ensure that they are gone for good?
Trump’s response was that the Obama administration badly mishandled the situation and that we spent 3 trillion on it and have nothing to show for it other than continuing instability and ISIS. Trump said would have left an adequate security force and he would have taken possession of the oil. Trump’s point was that ISIS would not have developed at all if we had taken the oil.
Trump was clearly referring to what we spent overall in the context of the question–which was about the people we’ve lost fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and what we have to show for it. Trump mentioned Iraq in reference to his answer on oil–Iraq has the oil. Just because he mentioned Iraq in that context, it does not mean that he was limiting his 3 trillion answer to Iraq. 3 trillion is a strange number to pull out of thin air. Obviously, Trump (or more likely his advisors) was familiar with the study that Steven cited.
Your point on whether the 13,000 miles of the Great Wall are all extant is equally silly. Again, the context of Trump’s statement is important. He was criticizing those who were suggesting that building the wall he proposes is too hard. He noted that while we need to build just 1,000 miles, the Chinese were able to build 13,000 miles of wall without modern technology such as tractors. Trump’s point was that they managed to build 13,000 miles of walls without modern technology so why should it be so hard for us to build 1000 miles with modern technology,. Whether all those miles of walls still exist or are contiguous is irrelevant to the point. Moreover, Trump got his number from official Chinese sources: China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage reported that the Wall is 13,172 miles long.
Trump is right on the facts in both cases.
Rick Stryker: I say again, read the transcript (or just the darn quote in the post); it’s clear it’s Iraq.
On the Great Wall, see Politifact. By the way, if I build a two foot high mud wall around my house that is 400 yards long, then add another another two feet of concrete, then add another two feet of brick, is my wall around my house 1200 yards long? That’s what you’re saying is true by citing the Chinese authorities’ figure without caveat.
I am sorry but your bias is showing. I have looked at much of what you write and have noted that you usually try to find a way to demonize Republicans by using models that have no relationship to reality.
Frankly, most people have some bias so I am not as worried about it as others might be. My bigger concern is the methodological errors that I see in the work. I believe that you have a tendency to rely on your considerable mathematical skills to create models that are simply incapable of capturing the complexity of a dynamic economy. And I see a lot of Keynesian thinking that should have been dropped decades ago. You take Keynes; give me Mises any day.
Vangel: Thanks. Would you like to make any relevant point regarding statistical analysis, or is that the extent of your comment — we can’t summarize the complexity of economy, so give up trying?
Just as an astute listener will note nothing Trump says off the cuff is reliable. Oh, sorry.
Trump said: “And we’re the only ones, we go in, we spend $3 trillion, we lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then, Matt, what happens is, we get nothing.”
Now ‘spend’ can mean ‘have spent in cash’, or it can mean ‘make a financial commitment of’. Brown estimates the total cost of Iraq, Pak and Afghanistan at around $8 billion to 2054. Of this, Iraq must be surely half. So an estimate of $3 trillion for Iraq alone looks pretty defensible to me.
Indeed, Brown University estimated the cost of the Iraq War alone at $2.2 trillion in 2013, three years ago. Costs continue to pile up. https://news.brown.edu/articles/2013/03/warcosts
Trump’s number doesn’t look that wrong to me, at least based on public sources he might have read. To me, this number suggests Trump has actually been educating himself.
So I don’t know. Of all the things one could trash Trump with, we’re left with a war cost estimate that’s off by maybe 25%. Doesn’t seem that bad to me. Really, this was the most objectionable thing he said?
And keep in mind, I don’t even like Trump.
Steven Kopits: If your definition of “spent” (what is commonly known as past tense) includes what is to be spent in the future, then sure, go with that.
I’m trying to deal with facts. I find the neocolonial view of seizing Iraq’s oil more objectionable, but that’s not a factual error (unlike Trump’s statement he was always against the war. In fact there is an internal inconsistency where he says he was always against the Iraq war, but always said we should take the oil…)
There is precedent in the budget for accrual accounting (see FCRA), so that definition of spent isn’t all that unreasonable.
As the Brown page points out, spending on the war was financed by debt, and those past and future interest payments would not be in your numbers above. Certainly if you factor those in, the cost would be well above $3 trillion.
Trump said ‘spend’. He used the present tense. I just don’t think he statement on this front counts as ‘wrong’ by the standards of politicians.
The rest of the stuff is more objectionable. Should have committed your powder there.
Steven Kopits: I stand corrected. Apologies for the error.
I must say, I don’t know why they went out just to 2054 (which is a decade longer than the CBO Long Term Forecast projection period); I think the interest cost taken to time t=infinity is … infinity.
Steven Kopits
Actually, I believe his use of “spend” was in the subjunctive. The indicative equivalent would be in the past tense.
Trump used ‘spend’, present tense.
Menzie,
You’ve dishonestly quoted Trump above, leaving out many sentences and an intervening question from Matt Lauer in the “…..” When you look at the entire quote, Trump referred to Iraq twice in specific contexts. His $3 trillion number was unrelated to that.
Also, I think I’ve made it clear how I feel about fact checkers. Politifact is partisan and wrong for the reasons I stated in my comment.
Here is the entire quote:
“QUESTION: Mr. Trump, over the past 15 years, a lot of U.S. troops have bled and died securing towns and provinces from Iraq to Afghanistan, only to have insurgent groups like ISIS spring back the moment we leave. Now, you’ve claimed to have a secret plan to defeat ISIS. But you’re hardly the first politician to promise a quick victory and a speedy homecoming. So assuming we do defeat ISIS, what next? What is your plan for the region to ensure that a group like them doesn’t just come back?
TRUMP: Sure. I mean, part of the problem that we’ve had is we go in, we defeat somebody, and then we don’t know what we’re doing after that. We lose it, like as an example, you look at Iraq, what happened, how badly that was handled. And then when President Obama took over, likewise, it was a disaster. It was actually somewhat stable. I don’t think could ever be very stable to where we should have never gone into in the first place.
But he came in. He said when we go out — and he took everybody out. And really, ISIS was formed. This was a terrible decision. And frankly, we never even got a shot. And if you really look at the aftermath of Iraq, Iran is going to be taking over Iraq. They’ve been doing it. And it’s not a pretty picture.
The — and I think you know — because you’ve been watching me I think for a long time — I’ve always said, shouldn’t be there, but if we’re going to get out, take the oil. If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and the wealth of that oil.
LAUER: How were we going to take the oil? How were we going to do that?
TRUMP: Just we would leave a certain group behind and you would take various sections where they have the oil. They have — people don’t know this about Iraq, but they have among the largest oil reserves in the world, in the entire world.
And we’re the only ones, we go in, we spend $3 trillion, we lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then, Matt, what happens is, we get nothing. You know, it used to be to the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil.
One of the benefits we would have had if we took the oil is ISIS would not have been able to take oil and use that oil…”
Rick Stryker: I didn’t know there was oil in Afghanistan.
Re Politifact. You say you don’t believe ’em. OK. Betcha you’re still on the sun circles earth crowd too. Still you haven’t answered my question: is the wall around my house 400 yards long or 1200. If you take the Chinese authorities’ number, it’s 1200. ’nuff said.
Menzie,
That took me for a second. The illogic is so stunning. Because Trump said that Iraq has oil fields, Trump must have been referring to Iraq with his $3 billion number estimate of the total cost, since Afghanistan doesn’t have oil. Uh, what?
You are getting into this level of illogic as a byproduct of the fast and hard obfuscating you are attempting here but let’s get back to basics. Your point in this post is that Trump just pulled a number out of thin air, but it’s easy to look up the real number, which he should have done and which you did. Then Steven points out the Brown study which Trump was obviously aware of but you weren’t. You try to rescue your point by claiming that Trump was really confining his remarks to Iraq even though he never said “We spent $3 trillion in Iraq.” And you go into other contortions, debating what tense Trump used.
Similarly, in the Great Wall post your original point was not that the Chinese government’s new estimate of 13,000 miles was wrong but rather that Trump just made up a number when he should have looked it up to know that the wall is actually 5,500 miles, the length of the Ming Great Wall, a number you helpfully provided in your post. Obviously, you were not aware that the Chinese government had re-estimated the length to be 13,172 miles. But Trump was aware of that.
To attempt to rescue your original point, you have tried to change the subject to whether the 13,000 estimate is really accurate. Does that matter? If it’s really 8000 miles because they built some of the wall on top of the existing wall, does that change Trump’s point?
Here’s the key takeaway. In both cases, you were accusing Trump of making up numbers, numbers that he could have and should have looked up and which you did look up to correct him. But in fact, in both cases, Trump did look up the numbers.
Even worse was his repetition of the lie that he was against the Iraq War before it started.
Last week he went even went further. In a rally in Iowa he claimed that the White House sent a delegation to him before the war to ask his opinion and he advised them not to go in.
Seriously, he wants us to believe that Bush and Cheney sent a team to the Trump Tower to help them decide whether or not to invade Iraq.
This man is mentally ill. There is simply no other explanation.
Menzie,
In response to your comment, I did read the transcript. You’ve dishonestly quoted Trump above, leaving out many sentences and an intervening question from Matt Lauer in the “…..” When you look at the entire quote, Trump referred to Iraq twice in specific contexts. His $3 trillion number was unrelated to that. Entire quote below.
Also, I think I’ve made it clear how I feel about fact checkers. Politifact is a partisan outfit no matter what they pretend and wrong on the Great Wall issue for the reasons I stated in my comment: whether all of the wall currently exists or is contiguous is irrelevant to Trump’s point.
Here is the entire quote, putting back in the sentences and Lauer’s question that you excluded:
“QUESTION: Mr. Trump, over the past 15 years, a lot of U.S. troops have bled and died securing towns and provinces from Iraq to Afghanistan, only to have insurgent groups like ISIS spring back the moment we leave. Now, you’ve claimed to have a secret plan to defeat ISIS. But you’re hardly the first politician to promise a quick victory and a speedy homecoming. So assuming we do defeat ISIS, what next? What is your plan for the region to ensure that a group like them doesn’t just come back?
TRUMP: Sure. I mean, part of the problem that we’ve had is we go in, we defeat somebody, and then we don’t know what we’re doing after that. We lose it, like as an example, you look at Iraq, what happened, how badly that was handled. And then when President Obama took over, likewise, it was a disaster. It was actually somewhat stable. I don’t think could ever be very stable to where we should have never gone into in the first place.
But he came in. He said when we go out — and he took everybody out. And really, ISIS was formed. This was a terrible decision. And frankly, we never even got a shot. And if you really look at the aftermath of Iraq, Iran is going to be taking over Iraq. They’ve been doing it. And it’s not a pretty picture.
The — and I think you know — because you’ve been watching me I think for a long time — I’ve always said, shouldn’t be there, but if we’re going to get out, take the oil. If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and the wealth of that oil.
LAUER: How were we going to take the oil? How were we going to do that?
TRUMP: Just we would leave a certain group behind and you would take various sections where they have the oil. They have — people don’t know this about Iraq, but they have among the largest oil reserves in the world, in the entire world.
And we’re the only ones, we go in, we spend $3 trillion, we lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then, Matt, what happens is, we get nothing. You know, it used to be to the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil.
One of the benefits we would have had if we took the oil is ISIS would not have been able to take oil and use that oil…”
Rick, I don’t think you are helping your case with your longer quote. That is Trump doing his best to win a contest with Sarah Palin for word salad gibberish. The guy is delusional and makes no sense.
In addition to lying about being against the war before it started, he is lying about being against withdrawal. He criticizes Obama, but this is what Trump said at the time, “You know how they get out? They get out. That’s how they get out. Declare victory and leave.”
It’s just one lie after another.
probably also important to note, the $3 trillion number would not even be under debate if the conservatives had not led us into Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place-especially Iraq. but that is what happens when we appoint cheney as commander in chief.
Was Trump referring only to the Iraq War to remove Saddam —or— was he referring to both the Iraq War (Saddam) and the War on ISIL in Iraq? The War on ISIL is in four countries (Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Syria) at last count.
Btw, remember when the US was air-shipping money by the planeloads; $10B-$20B, which then promptly disappeared.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/lost-iraq-cash-government-finally-accounts-6-billion_n_1052840.html
I believe the best we will ever get a best guess estimate on what is spent on these wars. The Pentagon has never been audited.
Rick Stryker I’ve noted before that you have difficulty with context. Now I’ll grant you that Trump’s mind is so confused and muddled that it’s oftentimes very difficult to figure out what he means. And it’s probably a waste of time anyway because he’ll immediately contradict himself with the next breath. My reading of the transcript and my hearing it live leads me to believe he was talking about Iraq. He used Iraq as an example. In the two sentences (well…sort of sentences) immediately before his $3T comment he was explicitly talking about Iraq. Again, given that he’s a hopeless scatterbrain perhaps he meant a lot more than just Iraq, but you have to stretch the English language pretty hard to come away with that interpretation. And if I were you I would be very worried if I found myself able to follow Trump’s ramblings.
Trump is also confused about ISIL and the American withdrawal from Iraq. Recall that the withdrawal was negotiated by Bush. Obama inherited the terms of the withdrawal. The US attempted to renegotiate with the Iraqi government, but they refused. So the US really didn’t have any legal basis for staying even if we wanted to. But the US troops were out of Iraq by late 2011. ISIL in its latest and most dangerous manifestation emerged out of the Syrian crisis and absorbed the remnants of A-Q in Iraq. In any event, ISIL is pretty clearly on the ropes and isn’t long for this world.
Trump is also confused about Iran. In case he didn’t know this, Iran and ISIL are on opposite sides. So it’s hard to see how Trump can claim that Iran is winning Iraq and so is ISIL.
Trump’s comment about stealing Iraqi oil sounds like something we might have heard pre-WWI. But then again, given Trump’s approach to business deals stealing doesn’t seem to be a big ethical problem in his mind.
Finally, I know a fair number of generals. Some good, some not so good. Very few of them are articulate when it comes to foreign policy issues…something that my diplomat brother-in-law frequently points out. Generals have general knowledge and are rarely experts in anything. They’re groomed that way because they only spend 2 years in any one area. They’re expertise in military affairs is comparable to a CEO’s expertise. CEO’s know a little bit about a lot of things, but rarely have the kind of deep and detailed understanding that only comes after a long career in a single field. And the 88 generals who support him don’t exactly have reputations as the best-of-the-best. Maybe that’s why Trump thinks generals are little more than rubble.
You might be too young to know this, but you should be very wary of Presidential candidates who campaign on secret plans.
This being an election year, it’s wise to remember candidates will say anything for their core constituency. Facts are important, but less important to a candidate’s voters.
I found this particularly amusing, but probably true:
The Princeton Review analyzed the transcripts of the Gore-Bush debates, the Clinton-Bush-Perot debates of 1992, the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 and the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. It reviewed these transcripts using a standard vocabulary test that indicates the minimum educational standard needed for a reader to grasp the text. During the 2000 debates, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) and Al Gore at a seventh-grade level (7.6). In the 1992 debates, Bill Clinton spoke at a seventh-grade level (7.6), while George H.W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.8), as did H. Ross Perot (6.3). In the debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the candidates spoke in language used by 10th-graders. In the debates of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas the scores were respectively 11.2 and 12.0. In short, today’s political rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a 10-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level. It is fitted to this level of comprehension because most Americans speak, think and are entertained at this level. This is why serious film and theater and other serious artistic expression, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of American society. Voltaire was the most famous man of the 18th century. Today the most famous “person” is Mickey Mouse.
Chris Hedges, Truthdig
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/20081110_america_the_illiterate
Occasionally, there’s nugget of truth in what some of these people write, but mostly it’s self promotion.
Keep in mind that writers like Hedges get around $8,000 for a speaking engagement; Naomi Klein gets $47,000 for a speaking engagement.
You can say more within the allotted time with smaller words.
Of course, someone like William F. Buckley used a greater vocabulary without saying that much 🙂
The Iraq war was financed by foreigners, indirectly, because we consume more than produce in the global economy and in the long run. Foreigners sell their goods to the U.S. for dollars to buy oil from other countries. In the mid-2000s, we were at full employment with up to $800 billion a year trade deficits.
The Vietnam war was not financed by foreigners. I wonder how much it cost in today’s dollars? There certainly were many more casualties. And, we didn’t defeat North Vietnam. We shouldn’t complain about Iraq, because foreigners pay for our services.
Trump is wrong and Hillary was right the first time. Saddam and his sons had to go. They killed well over a million Muslims, including with poison gas, caused enormous destruction and environmental damage, defied the U.N., and didn’t cooperate with the inspectors. An example was needed to show that the civilized world meant business. Consequences can be an effective deterrence.
Peak Trader,
do you really understand the concept of lesser of two evils? The current situation in Iraq and Syria , bought with more victims that Saddam inflicted and with huge sumes of money (economic damage) , is actually worse than the situation before 2003. Your attempts to justify this now sounds not very intelligent.
The loss of credibility of the USA has to be considered too.
Ulenspiegel, do you really understand the concept of policies? Changing the regime in Iraq, in itself, was a good policy. Iraq had a horrendous human rights record and the regime controlled trillions of dollars of oil (even before it rose to $100 a barrel) to create future havoc.
There were many poor policies after 2003 by U.S. administrations and Middle East governments. Much of the destruction was avoidable. The innocent people of the Middle East deserved much better.
For example, the U.S. with its allies could’ve stopped ISIL in its tracks before it became embedded in Iraq and Syria. And, when Syria crossed Obama’s “red line,” the U.S. and its allies should’ve removed Assad from power, one way or another.