Seminar calls Iraq conflict America's first "credit card war"

[MissMillie]

By Stephanie Schorow

Special to the Harvard News Office

The five-year-old Iraq conflict is America’s first “credit card war.” And like anyone who has run up a huge credit card bill knows, a credit card debt can turn into a crushing burden with long-term consequences. This, too, will be a legacy of the Iraq War.

That was the sobering assessment of an April 2 seminar at Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Business and Government as presenters — who included an Iraq veteran — attempted to estimate the true cost of the Iraq War both in dollars and in human lives.

“There were two decisions in this war: one, to go into Iraq in the first place,” said Linda J. Bilmes, Kennedy School lecturer in public policy. The second was that “we would fund this war by borrowing — putting the whole thing on the credit card. This is the first war in American history that has been funded this way.”

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2008/04.10/01-iraq.html