You Can Get With This Or You Can Get With That
Editorial columnist Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote an interesting piece discussing the true cost of the Iraq War. According to a Nobel prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz and the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, Robert Hormats the Iraq War will cost at least 3 trillion dollars. This figure includes cost which are never reported by the media or discussed by politicians. The truth is that the cost of a war is more than the money spent on men and material, as if it were some business venture that can be tallied with a nice spreadsheet and budget. In today’s world, war is packaged like a corporate enterprise complete with sanitized videos and reporting to make it more palatable to the disinterested masses.
Said Mr. Stiglitz: “Because the administration actually cut taxes as we went to war, when we were already running huge deficits, this war has, effectively, been entirely financed by deficits. The national debt has increased by some $2.5 trillion since the beginning of the war, and of this, almost $1 trillion is due directly to the war itself ... By 2017, we estimate that the national debt will have increased, just because of the war, by some $2 trillion.” NY Times
There should be a Constitutional Amendment that states, “no President can declare war without instituting a draft”. The problem today is that so many of us are unaffecting by the war in any personal and meaningful way. Oh sure we know people are dying, but they are strangers for the most part. Many of them who have received the least from this society are being asked to sacrifice the most. Yes, they are volunteers, but make no mistake about it for many in our society the choices are so limited that it is no longer a choice. For many of them it is a roll of the dice for maybe a better future and some better choices. Because they are brought home in secret we are never confronted by their deaths. I have never understood why we honor “our bravest” by secretly sneaking them back into the country following their greatest sacrifice. Is this how we honor our fallen heroes? This amendment would at least force the politicians who are tough on security to consider the fact that their children would be subject to the same opportunity to be heroes as those they so flagrantly send into harm’s way. It would also force us as a nation to debate the merits of any action being contemplated in our name, knowing that these decisions would affect all of us in a very personal way.
Instead of pouring 2 trillion dollars down the black hole that is Iraq, here are a few things we could have done right here in the good ole USA. We could have put an end to the partisan debacle that is Social Security for 50 years or more. And based on the Senate committee’s own spending calculations we could have enrolled 58,000 more kids into Head Start for a year with just what we are spending on one day of the war. We could also have enrolled an additional 160,000 low income students into college through Pell Grant funding for a year. Not in the calculations is how many of our fellow citizens we could have provided with healthcare insurance using this money.
Here is what I don’t understand we fight and we argue over providing support for those among us who are less fortunate and yet we spend this ungodly amount of money without batting an eye. What does it say about a country that spends trillions of dollars to kill people, but won’t spend any money to insure the healing of its own people. And to make matters worse one of the nominees for the next President considers the money well spent and wants to spend more. I don’t even blame Bush, McCain, or any of the other warmongers they are only doing what they do. I blame the American public for putting up with this crap. We have an economy that is in recession because we have allowed Bush to fight a war by mortgaging the future of our kids. We have allowed the politics of fear and false patriotism to trump democracy. In modern America war is good. Universal healthcare is bad. Free education is bad. Laying the groundwork for the neediest Americans with pre-school funding, tax credits and college grants, or employment training all bad.
Why is war good? It is good because it fuels the transfer of wealth from the middle-class to the wealthiest. It fuels the military-industrial complex and the war profiteers who in turn feed the lobbyists, who in turn purchase the politicians. You can’t spend all that money on war material and preparation and not use it. We must begin to cut our defense budget. We have spent all of this money on defense and it could not nor can it prevent 9/11 or any other terrorist type of attack regardless of the lies being spread to the contrary. This isn’t about look at all the wrong that America has done, it is about look at all the good America could do with a change in focus.
Of course there is also the toll that war takes on people’s lives through absences, injuries, and deaths. How can one calculate those costs? The loss of a parent, a brother, or son does not fit tidily into a balance sheet. The loss of a limb, a mind, or the trust in one’s government cannot be found in the defense budgetary process. How long will we continue to justify these types and sizes of expenditures for death and ignore the suffering going on right next door with our neighbors. You can get with the war or you can get with life, the choice belongs to all of us.
There are many more wrong answers than right ones, and they are easier to find - Michael Friedlander
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Comments :
That's true enough
We have spent all of this money on defense and it could not nor can it prevent 9/11 or any other terrorist type of attack
The nature of the threat we face has changed dramatically and our military is not geared towards meeting it. Intelligence agencies are now the front line in many ways for protecting America. Conventional wars between nations are becoming more rare worldwide -- the hot conflicts now generally involve guerrilla warfare.
We need to rethink the role of the military.
(By the way, you might find this recent diary
and the comments in it interesting.)
Instead of pouring 2 trillion dollars down the black hole that is Iraq, here are a few things we could have done right here in the good ole USA. We could have put an end to the partisan debacle that is Social Security for 50 years or more. And based on the Senate committee’s own spending calculations we could have enrolled 58,000 more kids into Head Start for a year with just what we are spending on one day of the war. We could also have enrolled an additional 160,000 low income students into college through Pell Grant funding for a year.
I'm of mixed feelings about comparisons such as these. On the one hand I certainly don't think we spent money efficiently in Iraq. The costs, measured in any way, were and will continue to be extremely high relative to the results. On the other hand I think you have to separate budget items and decide how much you will spend within each category. Cross-category comparisons are tricky -- for example, I support increased funding for NASA, but someone could make a valid argument that the billions spent on space gadgets could be better spent improving the lives of Americans who need a little help. My feeling is that we ought to decide as a society how much we want to spend on science, on the military, on safety-net programs, and so forth, and then be careful with cross-comparisons because it's always possible to make something look too expensive. But again, I agree that the costs of Iraq were much too high.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Not quite
There is no budget for supplementary spending which is what, if I recall correctly, most of the Iraq war is attached to.
I think the analogy stands since it is not a direct cross-comparison of different departments' spending but rather an application for this indiscretionary spending for more appropriate discretionary spending purposes.
Good point, most of the spending is outside the budget
I suppose it would be interesting to compare the cost/benefits of Iraq, then, to other projects funded primarily through supplemental spending -- maybe Katrina?
Some numbers here
(pdf).
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Though I'm pretty much a pacifist,
I don't know if we can make a sensible policy out of not allowing declaration of war without raising a draft. The good thing about that kind of policy is that it would cause people to think twice before cheerleading a rush to war, once they and their families were on the docket - but in practical terms, it also makes it a million times harder to raise public support for military intervention where it may be warranted: think genocide, for example.
I'm sensitive to the fact that some people think we shouldn't be intervening, even in genocides, but I wouldn't want to be hamstrung from doing it if it meant the difference between a military standoff or a massacre.
By the way, one slight correction to your post:
The constitution already says that no president can declare war, period. That's Congress' prerogative.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
the draft would not prevent frivolous wars
First, as pico pointed out, the Constitution can easily be ignored--especially when it calls for a politically unpopular program (such as a draft).
Otherwise, I don't think that there is any reason to believe that a draft would have the political consequences predicted in the above essay:
The elite would weasel their way out of the draft, just like they've always done. At the least, they'd manage to get commissioned as officers, rather than get drafted as cannon-fodder.
If this were so, then why didn't we see massive protests as we got more involved in Vietnam? Why was there so much more resistance to the Iraq war? The threat of a draft seems to provide little motivation to oppose war.
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
Dunno about that
why didn't we see massive protests as we got more involved in Vietnam? Why was there so much more resistance to the Iraq war?
I can't attest to this firsthand, but my impression is that the anti-war protests during Nam were *much* more large, widespread, and radical. To the point where clashes between protesters and law enforcement were common, and protesters were regularly beaten and even killed.
There has been significant protest to the Iraq war, but I would tend to say there was more resistance to Vietnam. Just my opinion, of course.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
I hate these budgetary comparisons
Comparing the above expenditures to the Iraq war are like comparing apples and oranges. These expenditures and military expenditures have radically different goals (even among reasonable people, let alone militarists)--yet these are always the comparisons that are made
It would be better to compare the military expenditures against alternative expenditures that have similar goals. So ask, "what are the goals of the war?"
"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." --Frederick Douglas
I like these goal-oriented comparisons
I'm gonna remember that, it seems like a useful way to evaluate costs.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson