Peace Now! Brown University, Watson Institute, Costs of War

A.  My Preliminary Comments

The research on the Costs of War compiled by Dr. Stephanie Savell of the Watson Institute at Brown University should be required reading for all American voters.  Using impeccable research techniques and focusing only on the post-9/11 conflicts that were part of the US “War Against Terror”, Dr. Savell and her associates concluded that those conflicts resulted in at least one million direct deaths and 3.5 million indirect deaths for a total of at least 4.5 million total deaths resulting from those conflicts.

Those totals are thoroughly disheartening, but let’s remember that Dr. Savell and her team placed severe limits on the range of the conflicts they analyzed.  Had her team increased what I would call the width and depth of the range of conflicts analyzed, I believe the total resulting deaths would increase by at least half a million, to five million total direct and indirect deaths.  Also, that increase in width and depth would automatically include the policies and personnel of every US administration from President George Bush the Elder through President Joe Biden.

Let’s take a look at what I mean.​

1.  Width

The motivation for Al Qaeda’s terror attacks on America, the events that drove 20-something Muslim graduate students to volunteer for suicide missions against the United States, began at the end of the first Gulf War.  The United States and its allies had successfully pushed Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, but Sadam Hussein was still in power in Baghdad.  So, in an attempt to provoke Iraqis to overthrow Sadam Hussein’s government, the George Bush the Elder’s administration pushed an embargo of Iraq through the UN, an embargo that even included medicines.  That embargo resulted in the deaths of about 500,000 Iraqis over the next eight or nine years, with most of those deaths occurring during the Clinton administration.  And revenge for those deaths – deaths which were instigated by the United States – were the prime motivator of Al Qaeda’s 9/11 bombers. 

2.  Depth

By limiting the focus of its Costs of War study to just America’s War Against Terror, the Watson Institute leaves out any consideration of the costs of America’s other wars during this thirty-year period – whether those wars were conventional, hybrid, or proxy.  The US-inspired NATO bombing campaign against Serbia was a conventional war.  The unsuccessful campaign against Kazakhstan in 2022, along with America’s almost continuous campaigns against Iran since 1979, were hybrid wars.  While the Ukraine disaster began as a US hybrid war in 2014, and continued that way until February of 2022, when it heated up to a full US proxy war.

3.  Fault

Dr. Savell and her team scrupulously avoid ascribing fault for the five million or so direct and indirect deaths counted in their report, but everyone who lived through those years or studied those events knows that primary responsibility for those deaths lies with the United States.

But the United States is a representative democracy, isn’t it?  So, shouldn’t responsibility be ascribed to the people who voted for the responsible administrations?

Well, not really.  Let’s remember that no one has ever run for President of the United States as an aspiring killer.  In fact, Americans always vote for peace.

It’s only after their inaugurations that all of our presidents elected since 1988 have become murderers.​

B.  Watson Institute’s “Costs of War” Documents

1. This is the single-page introduction to the Costs of War topic copied from the Watson Institute’s website and converted to a pdf format:

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2.  This is the two-page Executive Summary of the Costs of War Report published on the Watson Institute’s website:

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3.  This is the full thirty-nine page report on the Costs of War Report published on the Watson Institute’s website:

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