The University of Chicago web site cites a recent NYT article on the same analysis here. So, you can get some of their analysis without a subscription to The Economist.

As an FYI, according to The History Guy, the No Fly Zone cost around $1 billion/year.

What price do you put on the life of an American soldier and a nations reputation?

Committing to going to war (through 2006)?
Upwards to $400 billion.

Not Committing to going to war (with no-fly zone enforcement and "containment")?
Upwards to $700 billion.

Reading the naive and misfocused question posed by Barneyg2000?
Priceless...

I couldn't resist...

As someone who served for 27 years in the United States Armed Forces and continue to serve as a contract employee of the DoD, I am fully aware of the value of every American fighting man and woman.

I know this is a "what if", but what if we hadn't liberated Iraq. Saddam would have restarted his WMD programs, as the captured documents have proven he would have done, and we would be facing a more powerful Saddam, with the potential of even more members of our military killed during a future confrontation.

As for our reputation, if you are worried about our reputation with the socialist, Saddam-bribe taking nations of Europe, I could care less about what they think of us. If you are talking about countries which cherish freedom: the UK, Australia, Poland, and Eastern European Countries, I think our reputation is doing quite well, thank you. Of course, even in the UK there are those leftists who would rather we disarm and allow the terrorist attack us at will, but they are wrong.

Mark, I thought you knew enough about history to know that the world does not happen on paper. The article that garyb posted even said that a lot of it was just educated guessing with a big $350 billion dollar margin of error. I'll take this report with a grain of salt.

A-10

What bulls--- nonsense!! Talk to an Iraqi citizen and see if he feels liberated. What he feels now is OCCUPIED. If he goes to his neighborhood mosque he has to ask himself if he will be blown to bits. Shopping for his daily bread could be life threatening. Infrastructure is in a mess, and on and on it goes. Your logic is sickening. You have bought into the Bush doctrine lock, stock & barrel. You need to question this administration's motives.

I thought the article was interesting. And I am almost embarrassed to say I hadn't known of its existence until now. The cost of a containment strategy is something I had wondered about, but in my ignorance I had no way to really think about before, except in the most general terms. I don't think I am anywhere near alone in that regard, either.

So I think the article was especially good in the sense that it helped to put the projected costs of containment, both economic and humanitarian, in some kind of context. And I think in general they make some good arguments when they hypothesize that Saddam would have been hard to remove from office merely by some process of containment. Thus, if long-term containment was the only strategy applied, then it could very well cost somewhere 250B - 700B over time. And that's just the economic cost. As the article points out, by the time of the invasion, Saddam was responsible, either directly or indirectly, for the untimely deaths of over a million Iraqis. The guy was a monster in every sense of the word. And if nothing was done about him, there is every reason to believe that he and his despicable lineage would have continued to be monsters. No matter how touchy-feely you are inclined to be, it's hard to ignore that.

By the way, you can find a pdf version of the article mentioned at The Corner, and discussed in the Economist article that they direct you to here:
http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/steven.davis/research/War%20in%20Iraq%20versus%20Containment,%20Weighing%20the%20Costs%20(March%202003).pdf

On the other hand, their (meaning the authors of the article I just referenced) assumptions about the cost of the war were way off. They argued, on the basis of CBO estimates, that the war would cost somewhere between 60B and 123B, and offered a conservative estimate of 125B.

Oops.

So far the actual cost is easily 2 1/2 times that, and there is no end in sight. That in itself is an indicator of how bad we screwed up. But that's the subject of another rant (I am currently in possession of a Rumsfeld kewpie doll, lol!). As the Economist article's lead-in states (I didn't buy the article, so I just read the lead-in), more recent estimates of the cost of the war range somewhere between 400B and 2 trillion.

Double oops.

I don't know where The Corner guys got their 410B - 630B figures -- they didn't cite a source, and I don't care to speculate.

Anyway, the real bottom line is that this study was performed on the eve of the invasion. They used the information available at the time, but it is obviously outdated. Much has changed since then. What I would like to see a new study that takes into account the situation as it stands on the ground and hypothesizes in some realistic way the possible avenues we could take into the future. That's what I'd like to see.

Also, it might be nice to see a similar study done on the Iran situation and the North Korea situation. Anyone have any links?

Somewhat off the subject, but kind of related as well, I would like to see a similar cost/benefit analysis of the whole immigration issue. Putting dollar figures beside one's ideological perspective tends to have a sobering impact. I think that would work wonders on the discussion of the immigration issue right about now. It wouldn't hurt on many other fronts as well -- but again, that's another rant, lol!

A-10

CO states, "What bulls--- nonsense!! Talk to an Iraqi citizen and see if he feels liberated. What he feels now is OCCUPIED..."

I'm particularly touched about how passionate CO is when it comes to how the Iraqis feel today. They feel "OCCUPIED!" That's terrible, isn't it!? Correct me if I'm wrong, but under Saddam Hussein, they felt, "tortured," "murdered en masse," "spied upon," "institutionally raped," and otherwise like they were being treated like dogs that had no future whatsoever. Would CO kindly point me to his/her outcry over their human condition during that period of time? The darkness was complete, and the overt repression brutal. I'd pick "occupied" any day over the other options, since occupation by its inherent nature, has a beginning, a middle, and an end...

"...If he goes to his neighborhood mosque he has to ask himself if he will be blown to bits. Shopping for his daily bread could be life threatening..."

That is partly true, but "afrid of being blown to bits BY WHOM? The Americans? Noooo... The likes of Musab al Zarqawi, aggressive mullah militia, or any of the 10s of thousands of common criminals that Saddam Hussein released just prior to the war's commencement in March, 2003. The bombings that we are bearing witness to are not happening all over Iraq every day, in growing numbers. There are many areas of Iraq that are not experiencing these events. But of course, the antique media doesn't want to cover anyof that part of the story. While we are "occupying" Iraq, we are attempting to establish a rule of law and order headed and implemented by the Iraqi population. That's so we can achieve the "ending of occupation" that I referenced above.

"...Infrastructure is in a mess, and on and on it goes..."

I hate to be the one to break it to you, CO, but the infrastructure was in a mess long before the first bombs fell. You see, Saddam and his cronies took every penny that they could and spent it on themselves. If you were part of the Ba'ath Party, you're house MIGHT get electricity (depending upon how high up in a position of authority). The same goes for the water. The neverending attacks upon the infrastructure that's being rebuilt is causing progress to be slower than hoped for and expected, but progress is being made, nothwithstanding the gloom and doom picture painted by CO...

"...Your logic is sickening. You have bought into the Bush doctrine lock, stock & barrel. You need to question this administration's motives."

Well, at least you're able to admit that A-10 is actually using logic. You don't seem to be able to put logical concepts together well enough to hold up under any amount of scrutiny.

And it doesn't matter if we "bought into" the Bush doctrine or not, at this point. We've got boots and the ground and the pie's in the oven. I suspect that you would endorse grabbing the pie out before it's complete and throwing it against the kitchen wall. Surrender! Retreat! Pull Out Now! All is lost!

IT'S A WAR DAMMIT! THINGS GET UGLY! As a Canadian, you probably haven't been educated on that point, since the USA historically takes care of these things by and large for you and your nation.

I am all for questioning the Administration's motives and objectives, but in a civil, reasoned, and realistic manner. Shrieking "foul" at every step of the way doesn't make for legitimate dissent. It makes the shrieker look like a jackass...

I, too, an aware of the value and integrity of every American troop that has VOLUNTEERED to be of service to this country. Their opinions, actions and sacrifices are to be respected and revered, not spat upon like so many CO wannabes seem to be trying to do...

Canadian,

And how do you know all that? Have you talked to all of the Iraqis? Or are you just making a guess and hoping they feel that way because it gets you off the moral hook?

The only thing we KNOW about Iraqis is in what they DO...and they do continue to go to Mosque, continue to go shopping, continue to go to work, continue to vote, continue to join the police and army...based upon the actual evidence, we can only conclude that the Iraqis prefer now to 2003.

Alf,

Certainly - but the point, in my view, is that to talk of the cost of Iraq as if it were a separate thing which we could have entirely refrained from is specious.

What we need to think about is, of course, how much it is costing us now, how much it was costing us before, and what are the potential payoffs for doing what we do balanced against the potential costs and risks had we not done it. On balance, I believe that the liberation of Iraq is the most cost-effective thing the United States has ever done.

Mark,

Well, so far we're not sure of the type of pay-off the war in Iraq will provide for the US. For all we know pressure from the rest of the Middle East could sink it into another dicatorship or the opposite could happen with a strong and relatively just government remaining.

And there's still that big deficit which is going to have to be paid off somehow., and no one wants to have their kids put all their money into taxes for something that could have paid for itself if planned correctly by the government.

dbogdan

You didn't fight in any war to protect Canada. Brave Canadians fought in the lst. & 2nd. world wars before the U.S. ever considered joining. Since then, wars you've waged have always been to protect U.S. interests.

Mark, great points. One other thing to consider is, since saddam was shooting at our planes on a daily basis, what would have occurred if he had shot one down, either killing the passengers or holding them hostage.

It might be useful to look at the original paper (written before the war). Some of the things I found in it:

• The authors projected only $19 billion/year in post-war U.S. expenses.

• The containment costs were based on an estimate of Saddam’s regime (or one of similar philosophy) continuing for another 33 years.

Obviously, they were wrong on the first. On the second, it depends on what you believe about the west’s potential effectiveness shortening the life of the regime or it’s hostility.

One paragraph which makes me think we might want to move onto another topic:

Putting things together, annual containment costs of $19 billion can be converted to expected present value by discounting future expenditures at an appropriate rate, which we take to be 2 percent per year, and by the 3 percent annual probability that the Iraqi regime changes character. The resulting estimate for the cost of containment is $380 billion. This dwarfs any reasonable estimate of U.S. war costs.

It seems like they had made some bad assumptions. $380 billion over 33 years is not being dwarfed. There’s a good chance we will hit that number within five years.

On their top containment cost estimate of $630 billion, again you have to believe their prewar assumptions:

• That Saddam meaningfully increased the likelihood of major terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

• That likelihood increased homeland security costs by more than $80 billion, that homeland security spending against other terrorists would not provide sufficient protection against Iraq.

Even when you consider the high end $630 billion containment costs over 33 years, you might want to take into account other, more current projections for the cost of the war. For example, consider this one written in January 06. It claims that the price tag ends up in the range of $750 billion to $1.2 trillion over 20 years once you factor in

• The increasing costs of military operations.

• Continuing health care for wounded soldiers.

• Death benefits for soldiers.

• Other consequences like higher recruiting costs and financing of additional debt.

"...removing Saddam, it would have been far less than the cost in 2003. The failure to do so was, of course, the elder President Bush's - history will, I believe, judge the decison to halt in 1991 as an amazing strategic failure by a President who otherwise had excellent strategic sense."

In defense of number 41, who is not at the top of my list of favorite Presidents, I believe you may have forgotten 1991's extant circumstances. Long before the first shot was fired in Desert Storm, the purple haired, nose ringed, protesting professionals were out swarming the streets of San Francisco and like environs anticipating our nefarious intentions in Iraq. Because of their accusations G.H.W. Bush had to place so many conditions, promises, limitations and caveats on the invasion that he would've been tarred and feathered by the left and its media bullhorns had he attempted to do the right thing as you suggest.

He has taken a similar bad historical rap on the tax increase issue. The media propaganda tsunami that hit him was extraordinary for those times and was successful in purveying the notion that raising taxes was the only sensible and patriotic thing to do, and that Bush, in adhering to his campaign promise, was prioritizing his political self-interest over the good of the nation in order to save face. It is an unfortunate fact of life that the left, far too often, with the assistance of their media water boys, is able to set the parameters on conservative decision-makers. Fortunately, blogs like this one are helping to turn things around.

Mark,

Let us not forget that the war has cost MUCH more than originally predicted (or promised to us).

Also, another festering sore in the world is North Korea and the regime of Kim Jong-il, but we haven't pre-emptively attacked them yet. Why? Well, it's a sovereign nation, like Iraq. And we don't have the right to invade a sovereign nation. Except that we did.

Also, N. Korea has dangerous missiles. Nukes even! But we haven't acted like a police force there, have we? No, because there is not as much to gain from invading N. Korea, even though the people are starving and their infrastructure is in ruins.

Quit acting like this was all based on good intentions. Bush is not a morally sound man just because he invokes God. he is a poor decision maker, and in these mid-term elections, we're going to show him our displeasure.

War is cheaper than peace? Even assuming the cost of containing a third-rate dictator the assertion is ludicrous.

Canadia Observer wrote:

"...dbogdan

You didn't fight in any war to protect Canada. Brave Canadians fought in the lst. & 2nd. world wars before the U.S. ever considered joining. Since then, wars you've waged have always been to protect U.S. interests."

Right. Now change the subject... So what's wrong for fighting for our own interests, even when they parallel your country's?