Despite promising to end United States’ involvement in costly and destructive foreign wars, President Donald Trump, together with Israel, has launched a massive military assault on Iran, targeting its leadership as well as its nuclear and missile infrastructure.
Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington DC, the United States has engaged in three full-scale wars and conducted bombing operations in at least 10 countries. These operations have ranged from large-scale invasions to targeted air strikes and drone campaigns, often carried out over multiple years.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, then-President George W Bush declared a “war on terror”, launching a global military campaign that reshaped US foreign policy.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were followed by military operations in Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and other regions, as successive administrations expanded or sustained counterterrorism efforts.
Two decades of war and its costs
Research by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimates that US-led wars since 2001 have directly caused approximately 940,000 deaths across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other conflict zones, according to Al Jazeera report.
The figure excludes indirect deaths resulting from displacement, destruction of infrastructure, limited access to healthcare and food shortages, the report said.
According to the report, the United States has spent an estimated $5.8 trillion on post-9/11 wars. This includes $2.1 trillion allocated by the Department of Defence, $1.1 trillion by the Department of Homeland Security, $884 billion added to the Pentagon’s base budget, $465 billion for veterans’ medical care and roughly $1 trillion in interest payments on war-related borrowing.
In addition, the US is projected to spend at least another $2.2 trillion on veterans’ care over the next three decades, bringing the total estimated cost of its post-2001 wars to approximately $8 trillion.
