Dear Editor:

In sworn testimony before the House Armed Services committee on April 29, Pete Hegseth’s comptroller stated that the Iran “excursion,” then in its 60th day, had cost U.S. taxpayers $25 billion — that’s $416.6 million per day, for a war that has not achieved its principal goals and has seriously damaged the world’s economies.

Bad enough, if that price tag were true; but it isn’t. It is manifestly false. It doesn’t take an economist to know that warfare is far costlier than just replacing spent munitions. Factor in operational costs of ships and planes, combat losses, base repairs and equipment damage; add the cost of medical care, long-term rehabilitation and veterans’ disability benefits: we’re looking at $120 billion — $2 billion per day.

On top of that, count the cost of inflated food and fuel prices (not to mention that of every other product and service); add that to the total and we’re talking real money. Some analysts predict that if this war of choice continues, it could end up costing a trillion dollars.

Maybe that’s why Hegseth is requesting a $200 billion supplemental funding package — the $1trillion FY 2026 budget isn’t enough to cover Trump’s war of choice? Could it also be a reason for the proposed $1.5 trillion Defense Department budget for FY 2027?

I remember my high school economics teacher introducing us to the “guns versus butter” dilemma of federal spending. I can still see the sketch he made on the chalkboard, illustrating his main point: “If you build a tank, you might as well drive it off the end of a pier — that’s how wasteful it is. It is not an investment. It contributes nothing to our economy.”

So: Between the staggering “waste, fraud, and abuse” of our military budgets and Hegseth’s public testimony that the real enemies in this war are “the feckless and defeatist Democrats,” we are on track to lose both the war itself and the public support necessary for future projections of American military power.

Bill Hammond

Boothbay