"STATE OF INSECURITY: The Cost of Militarization Since 9/11", ~~ Lindsay Koshgarian, Ashik Siddique, and Lorah Steichen

https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/State-of-Insecurity-The-Cost-of-Militarization-Since-911.pdf

~~ posted for dmorista with introduction by dmorista ~~

Introduction by dmorista:        

"STATE OF INSECURITY" is a report / position paper from the Institute for Policy Studies.  It enumerates the $21 Trillion spent during the general militarization by the Federal Government since 9-11; that includes the following categories: Military $16.26 trillion; Veterans $3.07 trillion;  Homeland security $949 billion; Federal law enforcement $732 billion.  For a total of  $21.02 trillion. (Note a longer excerpt about how the authors arrived at their figures is posted at the bottom of this introduction. It is from page 6 of the report)

Of course, this enumeration does not include the intangible costs such as the long term effects on children who lost their fathers, or the effects on people who lost their spouses, children, or grandchildren.

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Excerpt from the article:  

“ABOUT THE NUMBERS

“The military is one of the most costly government functions. For our purposes, military expenses include the Department of Defense (DoD) and all direct costs of war, nuclear weapons activities at the Department of Energy and elsewhere, intelligence expenses including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), international military assistance, military retiree benefits and the selective service system, and smaller military-related expenses at the National Science Foundation, Maritime Administration, and other federal agencies.

“We include the cost of veterans’ benefits because military service and military activities give rise to the need for these benefits.

“We include most programs in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) because of the agency’s origins in the post-9/11 response, and because of its core mission to safe guard the country and borders from external threats. Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is situated within DHS, we exclude it from this analysis. …

“Federal law enforcement programs are included because counterterrorism and border security are part of their core mission, and because the militarization of police and the proliferation of mass incarceration both owe much to the activities and influences of federal law enforcement. ...

“Unless otherwise noted, all figures in this report are based on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) budget authority data and are inflation-adjusted to FY 2021.”