 October 2002
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Patrica Watson, Editor Sara Burke, Assistant Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
Cost of War Put at $200B Matthew Engel, The Guardian, 9/17/02 With the insouciance about the implications of war that is now fashionable in Washington, the president's chief economic adviser yesterday put a far higher figure on the cost of invading Iraq than anyone had previously mentioned. Lawrence Lindsey, head of the National Economic Council, priced the operation at up to $200B (£129B), but added: "That's nothing." He said that it would have little effect on the national debt, now running at about $3.6 trillion. Mr. Lindsey also rejected hopes that the war might stimulate the economy. "Government spending tends not to be that stimulative," he said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. "Building weapons and expending them isn't the basis of sustained economic growth." The Pentagon is believed to have estimated a cost around $50B, but independent economists say these kind of estimates are highly speculative, dependent on a large number of variables, and subject to all kinds of creative accounting possibilities. The 1991 Gulf war is generally considered to have cost about $60B, of which almost $50B was contributed by the US's allies. Mr Lindsey's remarks followed a similarly upbeat assessment from the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, who told a congressional committee last week that he believed the economic effects of a short war in Iraq would be negligible. He added: "My general view is that issues of foreign diplomacy and military strategy ought not to take into consideration what the impact on the American economy is."
For western consumers, the big imponderable is the effect on oil
prices. However, US companies have been scaling back their dependence
on Iraqi oil, from a million barrels a day earlier this year to
under 200,000 barrels, an amount that could easily be covered
from elsewhere. Industry analysts say that oil prices already
factor in the likelihood of war. 
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