The $1.3-Million-a-Minute War

Let’s ponder for a moment the vast sums that we’re pouring into the war with Iran.

The Pentagon has requested $200 billion (more than $1,400 per American household) to fund the war, but even that understates the total cost.

Linda Bilmes, a Harvard expert on financing war, told me that most of the costs will arrive later. For example, any soldier who develops a medical disorder or aggravates an existing one will receive lifelong benefits and medical care. If today’s troops claim such benefits at the same rate as those who participated in the 1990-91 gulf war, that alone would eventually cost at least $600 billion, Bilmes said. Not to mention, of course, the human toll of all of this.

All told, she expects this Iran war to cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion.

Here are some ideas of what the war money could be used for instead. My calculations are conservative, based on Pentagon reporting that the first six days of the war cost $11.3 billion — and even that incomplete tally amounted to more than $1.3 million a minute.

For a bit more than two weeks of this war, we could offer free college education to every American family earning less than $125,000 annually, at a cost of around $30........

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