This great article by Tom Woods from 2007 should be read by everyone, especially now that we are going back into Iraq (as if we ever really left).
“Estimates of the cost of the Iraq war continue to escalate to levels well beyond what its optimistic architects once promised. Most notable, perhaps, has been the estimate of Columbia University’s Joseph Stiglitz, who, in a January 2006 paper with Harvard’s Linda Bilmes, put the full cost at around $2 trillion. By the end of the year, the two had grown even more pessimistic:
‘ The $2 trillion number–the sum of the current and future budgetary costs along with the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by political uncertainty in the Middle East — now seems low.’
“Assessing the full costs of war, direct and indirect, as opposed to the immediate and obvious ones, is a crucial task for those who favor nonintervention. But at least as important is assessing the costs of the warfare state itself, whether or not it is currently engaged in actual fighting. The public is inclined to think of the costs of the military establishment in terms of the annual defense budget. The true costs, however, are much greater, although usually hidden.”
What the Warfare State Really Costs by Thomas E. Woods, Jr..
The Anarcho-capitalist 