Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense in the
Reagan administration, is a senior fellow at the Center for
American Progress. Laura Conley is a research associate at the
center. The two-week-old military action in Libya has prompted a
frenzy of headlines and sound bites about the operation's cost.
Can the United States afford it? The short answer is "yes." The
defense budget exceeds $500 billion a year, so the Pentagon has
money on hand to pay for Libya. But that's not the whole story.
The recent events in Libya have opened up a long-standing and
important debate about how we pay for our wars and military
endeavors around the world. The crux of the problem is that in
recent years, Congress has paid for wars through emergency
supplemental bills. At the same time, other defense costs were
allowed to spin out of control. And the costs have added up: The
total bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached $1.5
trillion to date. Estimates of the cost for boots on the ground
in Iraq and Afgha