Iraq War Spending Approaches Vietnam War Spending, But The Comparison Is A Bit Misleading

But only in raw dollars:

WASHINGTON – The total cost of the Iraq war is approaching the Vietnam War’s expense, a congressional report estimates, while spending for military operations after 9/11 has exceeded it.
The new report by the Congressional Research Service estimates the U.S. has spent $648 billion on Iraq war operations, putting it in range with the $686 billion, in 2008 dollars, spent on the Vietnam War, the second most expensive war behind World War II. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U.S. has doled out almost $860 billion for military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere around the world.
All estimates, adjusted for inflation, are based on the costs of military operations and don’t include expenses for veterans benefits, interest on war-related debts or assistance to war allies, according to the nonpartisan CRS.

But the important number to consider when we talk about the cost of the Iraq war is, predictably, buried far below the misleading headline in the article:

…the Iraq war has consumed less of the nation’s gross domestic product than other pricey conflicts. The Iraq war’s costs represented 1 percent of GDP in the peak year of the war. World War II, with a $4.1 trillion price tag in 2008 dollars, was nearly 36 percent of GDP and the Vietnam War was 2.3 percent of GDP in that wars’ peak years.
The report says comparisons of war expenses over hundreds of years “are inherently problematic” because of varying definitions of war costs. For example, the report’s figures for the Vietnam War are Defense Department estimates of the incremental costs of military operations — the costs of war activities more than the normal, day-to-day costs of a standing military force. The costs for post 9/11 military operations are estimated from Congress-appropriated amounts and Defense Department reports.
The CRS report warns that comparisons of costs in inflation-adjusted prices are a “very rough exercise.”

If anything this illustrates just how much more our modern military costs as compared to our military even from a few decades back. Better battlefield medicine, better weapons and gadgets such as missiles that we can put through a window from 1,000 miles away and pilotless drones that can bomb terrorist convoys without putting a single one of our troops at risk are all wonderful things that both reduce our casualties and increase our military’s effectiveness. But they also cost money to develop, manufacture, deploy and maintain.
Yet if that technology makes our soldiers more effective and safer (liberal moaning and groaning aside the war in Iraq has been a tremendously low-casualty conflict for one of its size and scope) I’m all for spending the money.
Besides, while our government has a big spending problem, military/war spending aren’t where that problem lays. We spend more on social programs in this country – particularly Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – than all the other countries in the world spend on armies and navies and war making combined.
I’ll be willing to listen to liberal griping about military spending when liberals start caring about other types of government spending.