America’s ‘War on Terror’ Has Cost Taxpayers $5.6 Trillion | The Nation

America’s ‘War on Terror’ Has Cost Taxpayers $5.6 Trillion | The Nation

US Army soldiers shield themselves from the dust as a medevac helicopter takes off in Afghanistan in 2010. (Reuters / Bob Strong)

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This essay is the introduction to Tom Engelhardt’s new book, A Nation Unmade by War, a Dispatch Book published by Haymarket Books.

As I was putting the finishing touches on my new book, the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute published an estimate of the taxpayer dollars that will have gone into America’s War on Terror from September 12, 2001, through fiscal year 2018. That figure: a cool $5.6 trillion (including the future costs of caring for our war vets). On average, that’s at least $23,386 per taxpayer.