1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

The bean-counters at the Department of Defense — admittedly not the best bean-counters in the federal government — have tallied up the cost of President Donald Trump’s unilateral military incursion into Iran. The first week of the conflict, they estimate, ran up a bill for U.S. taxpayers of somewhere around $11 billion, though they admit this is more of a ballpark number than a hard-and-fast calculation. It is probably safe to assume that any error in their calculations is leading them to underestimate the cost rather than to overstate it. Much of that cost was incurred in the form of munitions. The missiles and bombs that have been pounding Iran since the first attacks on Feb. 28 each carry substantial price tags. Add in the time of the pilots and operators carrying out the strikes — and then the costs of their support teams and vehicles — and it’s clear how quickly costs can add up. So to Trump, that $11 billion is $11 billion well spent, a manifestation of an otherwise elusive success. Average Americans, on the other hand, would be forgiven for wondering if all of that money was worth what we’re getting — which, so far, is international opprobrium and higher gas prices. You are certainly aware that $11 billion is a lot of money. If you bought a $50,000 car every day, $11 billion would be enough to cover your habit for more than 600 years. Put another way, $11 billion would cover the estimated weekly income of every household in a large swath of US counties — a swath that includes both Phoenix and Las Vegas.