Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
One factor that has to be considered, but which is impossible to quantify, is the degree to which the focus on Iraq diverted attention and resources from Afghanistan and from the broader effort against AQ.
Even worse, stupid wars distract from urgent domestic reform needs.
Domestic problems can easily reach an annual relevance/loss of hundreds of billion USD. Few foreign policy problems come close to this, especially not a smallish already defeated dictator at the other end of the world.


A method for weighting the monetary costs is to add the discounted future debt servicing for the sum, using the appropriate debt interest rates.
In short: USD 100 billion war costs cost more than USD 100 billion. It's likely more close to USD 120 billion because of the additional interest.
This does apply similarly even in case of a debt-free state, for that one would have opportunity costs (the cost of getting no interest rate income on the sum).