Second, at least for the Civil War and WW1, the long term costs were pensions. As someone has already pointed out, pensions for Civil War and WW1 veterans made up about as large a percentage of the government budget as Social Security does today. Today, though, we already have Social Security and soldiers are already entitled to pensions whether they fight or not. So, if you do the accounting right, retirement benefits aren’t an additional cost of the war.

Especially since we decided to go to war with the army we had, rather than raise an army appropriate to the task, as we did in the Civil War and WWI/II. It’s not clear that we’ve produced any new veterans this time around.

A few quick thoughts:

1) It’s unlikely that even if we fought in Iraq for 20 years that we would approach spending on WWII, either in terms of direct or indirect and subsequent costs; in terms of either dollars spent or lives lost or men wounded.

2) Both our government and our economy are MUCH larger than they’ve ever been. So, if you take something like the GAR after the Civil War or the American Legion after World War One, it’s highly unlikely that veterans will ever again form as effective a political coalition or consume as high a percentage of the national tax base. One reason the 1932 Bonus March was so controversial is that the veterans were demanding $2B in payment—at that time an amount equal to the entire federal budget & at a time when veteran’s benefits consumed something like 40% of the existing federal budget.

3) Even Vietnam positively dwarfed the Iraq War in terms of size and cost. Nearly 8M men & women served in the Vietnam war. I think it’s doubtful that 1M have served thus far in Iraq and Afghanistan (though it may be right around that number)—and again, our country and our economy are much, much bigger than they were 40-odd years ago.

4) Soldiers are paid better and better trained than at any time in our nation’s history. They are backed up by the most sophisticated and expensive weapons and support systems in the history of the human race. They also receive fewer constant-dollar post-service benefits compared to WWII and Vietnam.

So, even if there is some high number (and there’s reason to believe it’s very high) of wounded soldiers and Marines needing post-war benefits relative to those who served, it’s highly unlikely that these numbers and associated costs would be greater than in other wars. And even if they were… as a percentage of our economy and society, they wouldn’t and couldn’t come close to the impact our previous wars have had—because this is, relatively-speaking, a very small war by comparison.

Finally, all these figures are off the top of my head at 1:30 AM. Feel free to revise/refine… but the gist, I think, will remain just about right.

1. health care costs tend to rise faster than inflation

2. this war has a higher rate of casualties to deaths than previous wars

3. the casualties are often more serious and involve novel head injuries

the ratio of veterans benefits costs to war costs ought to be higher after this war. Except that Bush has tried very hard to push down the cost of veterans services.

(And except also that my understanding of 2 and 3 is based on a few things I have read in the newspaper – but that never stopped me giving a wrong opinion before).