Il vero costo dell'11 settembre

L'America alle prese con la spirale perversa del disastro finanziario delle guerre al terrorismo di Bush, raccontata da Joseph Stiglitz dieci anni dopo gli attentati dell'11 settembre.
Al-Qaeda, dimostratasi più debole rispetto alle previsioni della fine del 2001, sembra essere oggi l'ultimo problema a cui far fornte.

Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking America, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for entirely on credit. As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax "relief" for the wealthy.

Today, America is focused on unemployment and the deficit. Both threats to America's future can, in no small measure, be traced to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Increased defense spending, together with the Bush tax cuts, is a key reason why America went from a fiscal surplus of 2 percent of GDP when Bush was elected to its parlous deficit and debt position today. Direct government spending on those wars so far amounts to roughly $2 trillion-$17,000 for every U.S. household-with bills yet to be received increasing this amount by more than 50 percent.

Moreover, as Bilmes and I argued in our book The Three Trillion Dollar War, the wars contributed to America's macroeconomic weaknesses, which exacerbated its deficits and debt burden. Then, as now, disruption in the Middle East led to higher oil prices, forcing Americans to spend money on oil imports that they otherwise could have spent buying goods produced in the U.S. The Federal Reserve hid these weaknesses by engineering a housing bubble that led to a consumption boom. It will take years to overcome the excessive indebtedness and real-estate overhang that resulted.

Ironically, the wars have undermined America's (and the world's) security, again in ways that Osama Bin Laden could not have imagined. An unpopular war would have made military recruitment difficult in any circumstances. But, as Bush tried to deceive America about the wars' costs, he underfunded the troops, refusing even basic expenditures-say, for armored and mine-resistant vehicles needed to protect American lives or for adequate health care for returning veterans.