I don’t know if this will get pitted or not but it was one of those things that made me go Hmmmm.
We have spent more money (in absolute dollars) on this war than any other war in our history,
At the rate we are spending money on this war, in less than 1 year, we will have spent more money (in inflated dollars) than any other war in our history except for WWII.
It’s hard to determine if this means anything. The U.S. economy is vastly larger than it was in, say, 1917 or 1898 or 1861. Cost comparisons are difficult to make; soldiers today are paid reasonable wages, which they were not in years past, and the cost structure of military equipment is very different.
I find it hard to believe the Iraq war is as much an economic burden on the United States as the Civil War was. The War of 1812 damn near bankrupted the U.S.
Related question: How does one compute the actual cost of “the war”?
I mean, we maintain an armed force and pay the personnel every month whether they are in Afghanistan or Iraq of Fort Bragg. We maintain a finite fleet of ships, planes, land vehicles.
What extra dollar costs are involved in “the war” over and above the expenses of not being engaged in “the war”?
Cost of hazardous duty pay, ammo expended, more intensive use of “vehicles”, money paid to the Halliburtons, etc., for their overpriced “services”? Money spent to replace the Humvees hit by IEDs? What else?