Marrakech- President Obama is staying quiet about how a long drawn-out war with ISIS would be funded. Moreover, the White House is refusing to provide any estimates on the cost of the operation so far, or what it will cost in the future.
The war against ISIS is unbudgeted and the administration has paid for the airstrikes out of the Overseas Contingency Operations budget. This is an $85 billion pool to draw from but may be exhausted after a period of time, possibly throwing the United States even deeper into debt.
Countries like the UK and France have serious budget problems as well, and France is already militarily engaged in the Sahel and parts of Africa.
The first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s invasion was supported financially by Saudi Arabia, but no mention of financial support by the GCC has been made regarding the war against ISIS.
US-led airstrikes have disrupted ISIS, but the fight against them will take years, a Pentagon spokesman has told the BBC.
ISIS has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq, and the US has launched nearly 200 airstrikes in Iraq since August. Activists say at least 70 IS militants, 50 other al-Qaeda-linked fighters, and eight civilians were killed in the strikes, which hit multiple targets in the north and east of Syria. An article in the New York Times noted that air strikes were unlikely to dislodge ISIS in Iraq.
