U.S. troops pass in tanks through the Hands of Victory monument in Baghdad on November 13, 2003.
(Photo: Technical Sgt. John L. Houghton Jr./United States Air Force)
The Costs of War Project said the U.S.-led invasion and occupation “caused massive death, destruction, and political instability,” killing hundreds of thousands of people while displacing millions more.
As the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq approaches, a leading research institute on Wednesday said that “the total costs of the war in Iraq and Syria are expected to exceed half a million human lives and $2.89 trillion” by 2050.
The Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs said that “this budgetary figure includes costs to date, estimated at about $1.79 trillion, and the costs of veterans’ care through 2050.”
BREAKING: Iraq War costs to top $2.89T by 2050. New estimates put the human death toll of the war at 580,000. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2023/IraqSyria20…
The Costs of War Project
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Since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, between 550,000-580,000 people have been killed in Iraq and Syria, the current locations of the United States’ Operation Inherent Resolve.
According to the project:
March 19-20, 2023 marks 20 years since United States forces invaded Iraq to oust dictator Saddam Hussein, under the false claim that his regime was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. The ensuing war, in which U.S. ground presence peaked in 2007 with over 170,000 soldiers, caused massive death, destruction, and political instability in Iraq. Among the consequences was the increase of sectarian politics, widespread violence, and the rise of the Islamic State militant group with its terror attacks throughout the Middle East.
Though the U.S. government officially ended its Iraq War in 2011, the repercussions of the invasion and occupation as well as subsequent and ongoing military interventions have had an enormous human, social, economic, and environmental toll. An estimated 300,000 people have died from direct war violence in Iraq, while the reverberating effects of war continue to kill and sicken hundreds of thousands more.
The new report includes estimates for Syria, which the United States began bombing during the Obama administration after Islamic State militants rose to power amid the destabilization and power vacuum caused by the Iraq invasion and Syrian civil war. Including Syria, the Costs of War Project says between 550,000-580,000 people have been killed since March 2003, and “several times as many may have died due to indirect causes such as preventable diseases.”
“More than 7 million people from Iraq and Syria are currently refugees, and nearly 8 million people are internally displaced in the two countries,” the publication notes.
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Additionally, Oxford professor and Costs of War co-director Neta C. Crawford estimates that 98 to 122 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents were emitted from U.S. military operations between 2003 and 2021 in the war zone.
University of Oxford professor and Costs of War Project co-director Neta C. Crawford, who authored the report, said in a statement that “the Bush administration was convinced and assured the American people and the world that the war would have few casualties of all kinds—civilian and military—and would lead to quick victory.”
“As the Costs of War Project has documented consistently, these optimistic assumptions are confronted by a record of death, high and ongoing costs, and regional devastation,” she added.
Those ongoing costs include a recent $397.5 million budget request from the Biden administration to fight what’s left of Islamic State.
