Hot Potato Mash
Supporters Of The Iraq Occupation Must Answer This Question
The NY Times’ Nicholas D. Kristof believes that “staying in Iraq indefinitely undermines our national security by empowering jihadis”. He adds, that if you disagree with this assessment and “believe that staying in Iraq does more good than harm, you must answer the next question: Is that presence so valuable that it is worth undermining our economy?” All supporters of the continuing occupation of Iraq should be forced to answer that question in light of the following:
Granted, the cost estimates are squishy and controversial, partly because the $12.5 billion a month that we’re now paying for Iraq is only a down payment. We’ll still be making disability payments to Iraq war veterans 50 years from now.
Professor Stiglitz calculates in a new book, written with Linda Bilmes of Harvard University, that the total costs, including the long-term bills we’re incurring, amount to about $25 billion a month. That’s $330 a month for a family of four.
A Congressional study by the Joint Economic Committee found that the sums spent on the Iraq war each day could enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start or give Pell Grants to 153,000 students to attend college. Or if we’re sure we want to invest in security, then a day’s Iraq spending would finance another 11,000 border patrol agents or 9,000 police officers.
Imagine the possibilities. We could hire more police and border patrol agents, expand Head Start and rehabilitate America’s image in the world by underwriting a global drive to slash maternal mortality, eradicate malaria and deworm every child in Africa.
All that would consume less than one month’s spending on the Iraq war.
Moreover, the Bush administration has financed this war in a way that undermines our national security — by borrowing. Forty percent of the increased debt will be held by China and other foreign countries.
“This is the first major war in American history where all the additional cost was paid for by borrowing,” Mr. Hormats notes. If the war backers believe that the Iraq war is so essential, then they should be willing to pay for it partly with taxes rather than charging it. (emphasis added)
One way or another, now or later, we’ll have to pay the bill. Professor Stiglitz calculates that the eventual total cost of the war will be about $3 trillion. For a family of five like mine, that amounts to a bill of almost $50,000.
Read the entire Kristof Op-Ed.
(Source)
JJ,
Take the time to read the entire Kristof article which is linked toward the bottom of this post. That’ll more clearly tie things together for you hopefully.
Basic math is that if there is a finite amount of money available (which is another question, actually) and all of that and even more is going to military contractors and war profiteers, then there is less left for the country’s domestic needs.
So um.. how is this tying war spending to the recession? The amount being paid is NOT coming out of peoples pockets right now. It will kill us in the long term, but the amount of spending that’s happened the last couple of years has likely helped the economy (as in, the gov as has been spending like crazy, which creates jobs, et al). I’m not saying any of this is good long term, but…
If anyone has any doubts about our financial status, please, read a few speeches of David Walker, the recently resigned and very honorable Comptroller General of the United States, who has been saying for years that the economy was unsustainable. If the admin. has not scrubbed that data yet.
Still in doubt – Wikileaks today regarding the Securities and Exchange Commission + J.P. Morgan.
The stuff shoved under the carpet just got so much bigger than the carpet. Man, you’d need to be on a Limbagh sized dose of stupid not to see all that crap under that little carpet.
Your analysis is concise, but flawed by a couple assumptions. You assume that war supporters are intelligent enough to understand the consequences of America’s current financial instability, and that they love America more than they love hatred and violence. I don’t find either of those assumptions to be founded.
Violent, aggressive authoritarians are not stopped by logic and reason, to which they are invulnerable, but by a bullet to the head placed there by a brave but peace-loving person pushed to the limits of his or her ability to abide by the destruction of these simple minded brutes.