Faculty Research Fellow Neta Crawford Authors Article on Costs of Iraq War for The Conversation

Neta C. Crawford, Professor and Chair of the BU Department of Political Science and a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow, recently authored an article for The Conversation on the $2 trillion dollar cost of the Iraq War to date.

Included in the ongoing costs are nearly $200 billion for medical care and disability compensation for Iraq War veterans, and about $59 billion for “democracy promotion, reconstruction, training, and removing unexploded bombs” in Iraq and Syria. In addition, Prof. Crawford — citing a recent report by Faculty Research Fellow Prof. Heidi Peltier — notes that the total cost should include another $444 billion in interest, a result of the lack of war taxes and bonds to finance the post-9/11 wars.

The article lays out some of the recent findings of the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, which Prof. Crawford co-founded in 2010 to explore the human, financial, environmental, social, and political costs of the post-9/11 wars. In October 2019, the Pardee Center launched a new collaboration with the Watson Institute called 20 Years of War: A Costs of War Research Series to expand the project with a new set of analyses to mark the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the post-9/11 wars.

Read the full article here.