Britain spent £30n billion on Iraq and Afghan War.

[Hangarshuffle]

Story belatedly picked up on by me in todays small I. newspaper.
The Independent | News | UK and Worldwide News | Newspaper (http://www.independent.co.uk/)
But now seems to have been deleted. Pity. Anyway, in the print version Oliver Wright picks up on a new book by the Royal United Services Institute.
https://www.rusi.org/
Cost of the combined wars were at least £30 billion. Not including this years bill.
The book, is called Wars in Peace: British Military Operations since 1991.
Quote from book" The underlying flaw in both of these operations was that the US and UK leaders thought that their superior military power, along with large amounts of money, could shift foreign societies into quite different paths of political development"
And so forth. And the cost in cash?
The I says its the equivalent of £1000 per taxpayer, or 1,464,000 new nurses, or 5250 new free schools.
I've often thought about the lives that could have been spared, saved-on all sides.

[Thelma Viaduct]

Can I have my £1000 back please.

Total waste of life and money, blatantly wrong before the event let alone after.

Blair should be in jail with a PS3 for company, not working as a 'peace' envoy.

[500N]

I always found it kind of ironic that Blair of all people is a "Peace" envoy !

A bit like Maggie Thatcher becoming a union supporter ;)

[racedo]

So Afghanistan 453 and Iraq 179 service personnel lost their lives because Politicians decided to spend £30 :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: Billion to achieve ZERO.

Wish they had given each of those people who died a £1 Million each and stayed at home.

[Courtney Mil]

To be honest, I'm surprised that's all. But you're counting money, not lives.

[Hangarshuffle]

Yes there's not many chomping for war now. But thinking back to my own involvement, and after what had occurred in 2001, we seemed to sleepwalk into it. Plenty relished it, and seemed to welcome it.
Did anyone have doubts? None of my military commanders seemed to.
When it got to eve of invasion it had seemed to have developed an unstoppable momentum established in the Autumn of 2002.
I still don't think we can have a proper debate until the publication of the Chilcot Report.
The 30 billion seems obscene, in the light of the austerity many people within the UK seem to live with.

[Hangarshuffle]

£30 billion. Americans said Iraq was 190k lives all told, all sides.
.Study: Iraq War Cost 190K Lives, $2.2 Trillion | Military.com (http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/03/15/study-iraq-war-cost-190k-lives-22-trillion.html)


Needs to be debated still. I lost a lot of faith in many things, in later years, and the war is blamed for apathy in UK voters (as seen in recent elections, so I'm told).

[racedo]

In late 2001 I was in New York, de:mad: deliberately as I figured I should do what I could to say I Luv NY. Met then a guy going out with good friend of mine and he ex Airborne who worked among other things at recruiting into Coasties, Navy and Nat Guard etc.

He opposed Afghan war as struggled to find out what was its purpose and pretty much said every single other current and ex officer he were saying privately about Afghanistan as no one saw end game. He said, No one would speak out because given the hurt people were in that was seen as treasonous. Nobody wished to be accused of supporting the enemy whose handiwork was still smoking in Manhatten so instead the went off half cocked.

After a very late night and me facing an early morning flight to the South West he just said "How the :mad: will we know when we have won or IF we have won" ?

[racedo]

Needs to be debated still. I lost a lot of faith in many things, in later years, and the war is blamed for apathy in UK voters (as seen in recent elections, so I'm told).

Its not apathy its anger.

Sold something which was a LIE twice and all that has occurred is Coffins at BZ.

Public have been great welcoming home the dead but keep asking WHY ?

Public don't trust politicians who throw away other peoples lives.

[NutLoose]

£30 billion, £40 billion, £50 billion, does it matter? Not one of those lives was worth losing no matter what cost they put on it all.

The cost will be far greater than the £30 billion stated, that £30 billion that wasn't there could have been used elsewhere to stop the rot in the country, the armed services and the infrastructure. Instead of propping up the likes of Karzia.


..

[jayc530]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/costly-failures-wars-in-iraq-and-afghanistan-cost-uk-taxpayers-30bn-9442640.html

[rh200]

Yes and its good to see how the ****e's and Kurds lives who make up the majority of Iraqi are regarded as worthless, even though they are now free.

Though in the case of the Kurds they did have their own little enclave going. I'm fairly confident if you asked the majority demographics of that country if they would have preferred Saddam was still in power I know what it would be.

[Ronald Reagan]

We can add to that the disaster of Libya:-
BBC News - US tells its citizens to leave Libya amid unrest (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-27599301)


We had made Gaddafi an ally, a brilliant foreign policy achievement but then the fools that are Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama decided to remove him anyhow. The result is the broken and shattered nation that is Libya today.


We are led by total fools. All I can say is thank god they were denied the ability to attack Syria!

[Davef68]

Afghanistan could be argued as having a legitimate purpose, but Iraq was soley to stroke the egos of certain politicians. And it meant that we dropped the ball in Afghanistan.

[gr4techie]

Story belatedly picked up on by me in todays small I. But now seems to have been deleted. Pity.

It makes me suspicious when news stories suddenly disappear or change their content. So much for freedom of press, maybe they have an agenda / political bias.

Cost of the combined wars were at least £30 billion.

I've always wondered who received all this money? Some contractors must have profited big time from these wars. One example, Halliburton and Dick Cheney.

The result is the broken and shattered nation that is Libya today.

Is Iraq any better? Sometimes you're better off leaving the dictator in place. At least they had control over the nation. Now you factions fighting in power vacuums. One example close to home is the police not arresting the head of organised crime mafias.

[Davef68]

I was going to post similar- there seems to be a preference for 'freedom' and democracy, whatever the outcome, over controlled dictatorship, regardless of the situation.

[hulahoop7]

..and what was total public sector spending over the same period?

[Lonewolf_50]

Sometimes you're better off leaving the dictator in place. At least they had control over the nation.
Like North Korea. You're all heart.

When you have a strong man, cult of personality, or despot running a place, and he dies, what happens next?

Look at what happened in Yugoslavia. It slowly devolved into a bit of a disaster.

I have always wondered if one of the factors leading into the decision to go to Iraq included how much bigger of a mess it was perceived to be at the time for Saddam to drop dead one day.

Iraq would likely have cracked and broken rapidly, given the fault lines already in place. As it was, it has cracked, but had for a time a moderating factor of a significant international coalition trying, with mixed results, to keep a lid on its dissolution. They are still having significant internal strife and violence, but it is more or less contained within Iraq. I don't see the Arab Spring wave from TUnisia to Libya to Egypt to Syria as being necessarily related to the war in Iraq. Maybe some of it was. Not sure.

Iraq was bigger than Yugoslavia and had a more critical political and geographic position. It sits in the Persian Gulf (where the real political problem was, which was and remains Iran) where its rapid dissolution would pose a threat to all of the nations next to and near it, with the only big dog in that region able to pounce nad exploit it being Iran. As many of them are oil producers, that would have knock on effects globally.

Maybe the political calculus didn't include that consideration, and maybe it did. At the time the US led the effort into Iraq, the US and others still had troops on the ground in Bosnia and a few other locales nearby, had since 1995 (or as far back as 1991 for the UNPROFOR participants) and were STILL THERE in a smaller and more societally similar place.

That point alone is where I was cynical about Rumsfeld's and Cheney's presumptions about a short and comparatively inexpensive war. They were ignoring the lessons of long term involvement from an easier nut to crack: Bosnia, and it was right in front of their noses.

:mad::mad::mad:

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

If anyone with their pocket abacus handy could advise on how much of that £30,000M was a standing Overhead and how much went straight back to the Treasury via the usual economic means, I'd be grateful.

Personally, I don't think the waste was money.