mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, we look now at the many costs of the war, from the civilian casualties to soaring Pentagon budgets, with Neta Crawford, co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University. She’s author of a new report titled “Blood and Treasure: United States Budgetary Costs and Human Costs of 20 Years of War in Iraq and Syria, 2003-2023.” She’s also professor of international relations at Oxford University and author of the new book The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions. Today she’s joining us from Montreal, Canada.
And what has happened over the last 20 years is that thousands of U.S. servicemembers were killed, about 5,000 U.S. servicemembers, and many contractors. And then, in addition, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed — 7,000 by the U.S. in the first month of the war, but now hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed by all parties over the 20 years. And that’s in part because Iraq descended into civil war shortly after the U.S. invasion.
And then, in addition, many millions of people were displaced. Millions of people are still displaced internally and also as refugees in the region. Now, in Syria, the U.S. — when the U.S. intervened in 2014 into an ongoing Syrian civil war, many more people were displaced, many more people were injured by bombs.
— source democracynow.org | Mar 17, 2023