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Mimi Healy, Jennifer Greenburg "Trump's Policies Will Worsen the Military's Sexual Assault Crisis" Common Dreams, April 29, 2025...
Mimi Healy, Jennifer Greenburg "Trump's Policies Will Worsen the Military's Sexual Assault Crisis" Common Dreams, April 29, 2025...
Costs of War Project research supports an interdisciplinary approach to teaching on the post-9/11 wars. This community is open to instructors, students, and researchers from all fields and the resources can be utilized for college, high school, and middle school educators. Do you have a resource...
March 19-20, 2023 marks 20 years since United States forces invaded Iraq to oust dictator Saddam Hussein, under the false claim that his regime was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. The ensuing war, in which U.S. ground presence peaked in 2007 with over 170,000 soldiers, caused massive...
Montague Burton Professor, University of Oxford
Co-Founder, Costs of War
Neta C. Crawford is the author of "The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions" (MIT Press, 2022). Crawford is also the author of three other books, "Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America's Post-9/11 Wars...
August 2017
Noah Coburn (2017)
Paper (pdf)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] – On Monday, President Trump’s speech on the war in Afghanistan seemed to reveal a U.S. military strategy that will continue to look like more of the same. Even with an increase in military personnel, the U.S. can expect to see a continued reliance on the tens of thousands of security contractors who many war analysts now call America’s invisible soldiers or army. A report released this week by the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs describes, in detail, the exploitation of immigrant contractors working for the U.S. in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, highlighting abysmal labor conditions and other human rights violations.
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May 17, 2013 American Anthropologist
"The Costs of War project advocates increasing governmental transparency of those aspects of war that can be counted…as a basic means of providing the context for a democratic debate about war."
Through Fiscal Year 2022, the United States federal government has spent and obligated $8 trillion dollars on the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere. This figure includes: direct Congressional war appropriations; war-related increases to the Pentagon base budget; veteran...
February 8, 2024 Counterpunch
Costs of War was cited in Counterpunch on U.S. military spending.
September 8, 2020 The Daily Caller
The Daily Caller features Costs of War's study, authored by David Vine and colleagues from American University, calculating that 37 million people have been displaced by the U.S. post-9/11 wars.
August 16, 2018 TomDispatch
Costs of War study cited on TomDispatch, "Thanks to [Osama bin Laden's] “precision” weaponry -- those 19 suicidal hijackers in commercial jets -- the nearly 17 years of wars he's sparked across much of the Muslim world cost a man from one of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest families a mere $400,000 to $500,000. They’ve cost American taxpayers, minimally, $5.6 trillion dollars with no end in sight."
August 30, 2011 Star Tribune
“The more disturbing finding, however, is that in the coming years the wars threaten to cost the nation another $2 trillion – in interest payments on war debt as well as continuing medical expenses for 150,000 wounded veterans.”
March 17, 2023 Democracy Now!
Neta Crawford discussed her book, The Pentagon, Climate Change and War, in a separate segment on Democracy Now! web exclusive.
At least 940,000 people have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. The number of people who have been wounded or have fallen ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who have died indirectly as a result of the d...
November 2019
Neta C. Crawford and Catherine Lutz (2019)
November 7, 2021 The Guardian
The Guardian cites research by Erik Dahl on the Department of Homeland Security and how it missed the domestic rise in terrorism and white supremacy.
September 16, 2021 USA Today
USA Today cites research by Thomas Suitt III on veteran and service memeber suicides since 9/11.
Senior Researcher, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Director of Programs, Costs of War
Heidi Peltier has been a contributing author to the Costs of War project since its inception in 2010 and joined the staff in 2019....
November 2019
Human Cost of Post - 9/11 Wars: Direct War Deaths in Major War ZonesAfghanistan and Pakistan (October 2001 - October 2019); Iraq (March 2003 - October 2019); Syria (September 2014 - October 2019); Yemen (October 2002 - October 2019); and Other1...