Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) has claimed the Iraq campaign “is costing like Vietnam”. I’ll leave it up to the reader to compare budget requests for Iraq with the costs of Vietnam. Particularly of interest is the table showing the actual incremental costs: the amount spent on Vietnam over and above the normal defense budget.
Keep in mind a few facts as you think about it. There is a bit of a difference in the value of a dollar between then and now. In 1965 you could still buy a comic book with a silver dime (debased coins had just been released that year). Vietnam lasted a decade and peaked at a half million troops. There were single day’s (certainly single weeks) in which the American death toll exceeded the losses in Iraq to date.
The conditions in Iraq are very different from Vietnam. For it to become “a Vietnam” would require:
- a major portion of the Iraqi population deciding on civil war to overthrow or prevent a new government.
- the Syrian regular Army operating across the border in support of the civil war.
- the growth of jungle in Western Iraq and surrounding areas. (Cover for the enemy, denial of ground for armoured operations)
- Russia (or France or China) pouring billions in modern arms and advisors into Syria and threatening nuclear strikes on American cities if the US crosses the border.
- the DOD dropping doctrines of integrated operations and use of overwhelming force.
- micromanagment of US strategic and tactical operations for purely political reasons.
This all seems very unlikely.
Great post, Dale, but you really need to turn off the italics at the end 😉
Done
Hmmm… Natalie just happened in while I was still editing and that was one of the corrections I wrote out. She was just unlucky to hit just in between updates.
In the linked article it doesn’t make clear what value of dollar is used. The references are from 1974 in the first chart – so is that in 74 dollars or unchanged?
It would help to get a better idea.
Of course, other numbers have been in my mind recently, in adjusted dollars I understand the entire Apollo programme was betweem $100bn and $150bn in 2003 dollars; alternatively the current request for funding is in the region of 6 times the entire US federal spend on space.
Those numbers look to me to be in then-year dollars, uncorrected to any base-year.
Not forgetting that the Iraqis would have to swap tea towels on their heads for conical straw hats, and dish dashes for black pajamas.
Not forgetting that Iraqis would have to change tea towels on their heads for conical straw hats, and dish dashes for black pajamas.
Dale:
The total figure given in your reference for 1965-69 is about 80 billion dollars. After allowing for inflation (approximately 5.5-fold to 2002), this equates to about 440 billion dollars.
Reliable figures for the Iraq war are hard to come by, but a report in U.S.A. today gave a figure of 63 billion for the combat phase, plus 100 billion over 5 years for peacekeeping plus up to 300 billion over 10 years for rebuilding – giving a grand total of 463 billion.
Much of this is obviously a guestimate of future costs, but if it pans out then Iraq will in fact top Vietnam.
Cydonia
Good points, Dale. I served two years in Vietnam, and Iraq is very different in important ways.
But there is a potential for the two conflicts to have similar results. If, for example, a President Howard Dean were to recklessly pull out American troops before institutions of freedom were firmly established in Iraq, that country could be lost the same way Vietnam was lost.
Ralph Peters, writing in the New York Post, highlights America’s real vulnerabilities in Iraq:
[W]hen faced with determined enemies whose capabilities are no more than the smallest fraction of our own, we reveal two dangerous weaknesses: Impatience, and the profoundly mistaken notion that the absence of a clear-cut victory means that we have been defeated.
Read the whole thing.
Cydonia,
Vietnam lost out! As there was no US funded rebuilding phase after the Vietnam war the two are no comparible. Comparing it to the cost of rebuidling WWII might be.
The apples-to-apples comparison is the cost of fighting the Vietnam war v. the cost of fighting in Iraq (which could be broadly defined to include security operations since the demise of the Baathists). Including the costs of rebuilding Iraq with the costs of fighting and security means you are including some oranges with your Iraqi apples. I haven’t seen an apples to apples comparison yet, although the Dems are pushing some apples-and-oranges to apples comparisons (and conveniently omitting the fact that their prescription drug benefit would dwarf even the apples-and-oranges costs of Iraq).
Cydonia: Those were the best numbers I was able to come up with with a half hour google. Note they are very incomplete. If nothing else, they include only the expenses for the period extending from the Tonkin Gulf Incident up through Nixon’s first year in office. There were very significant expenditures in 1970-72 and large amounts of military aide to the Vietnam government up until the time of its’ fall. Also not included are funds that went in through other programs via State or USAID. I do not think it unlikely the full tally of 11+ years of Vietnam (there were advisors there during the Eisenhower administration in the 50’s) topped a trillion now-year dollars.
As another commenter notes, the numbers we are looking at for Iraq are not only war funds. They include much else. To get a good compare you’d have to find those numbers as well and I have not so far found anything beyond the direct military expenditure during the middle period of the Vietnam war.