Posted on 02/05/2006 10:32:01 PM PST by churchillbuff
God forbid critics of the war on Iraq should compare it with the war in Vietnam. But perhaps it is worth mentioning that the liberation of Iraq is now costing more each month than the preservation of the Republic of South Vietnam did more than 30 years ago.
As the admitted direct cost of the war reached $250 billion last week -- and the White House asked for $120 billion more on Thursday -- new analyses estimate that the invasion of Iraq could end up costing $2 trillion before it is over.
If you remember, the White House's own economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, was fired for predicting, in September 2002, six months before the invasion, that the total cost of the war might reach between $100 billion and $200 billion. What I (and perhaps others who questioned the wisdom of the war before it began) remember is the hundreds of e-mails and letters I received after I quoted Lindsey and used the higher figure as more likely. "Moron" and "traitor" were among the more polite epithets of the day.
Numbers can be misleading, of course. Some, such as the long-term cost of treating damaged survivors of battle, can be exaggerated or minimized. Some can be hidden in other budgets or drawn from confusing off-budget accounts. And even the most accurate audits and projections, while they translate all the numbers into current dollar amounts, rarely mention that the U.S. economy is much bigger than it was in the 1960s and 1970s, so that while the Vietnam War at times was using almost 10 percent of the gross national product, this one and the war in Afghanistan might be in the 2 percent range.
But the exact figures are not the issue. The Washington issue is that the Bush administration has been lying from day one about the cost of this "preventative" war of choice. The original White House estimate of the total war cost was $75 billion, including the destruction of all Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction." Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, whose fiscal acumen won him the presidency of the World Bank, even offered the theory that the war would be self-financing, paid for by Iraq's oil production. That's rich. And so are oil producers everywhere.
The war, in fact, is a factor in the escalating cost of petroleum products here and everywhere else in the world. Leaving that aside as you watch the gas-pump digits rise to Super Bowl numbers this weekend, two anti-war research institutes, the International Relations Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, estimate that the war's cost per citizen has reached $727 -- or close to $3,000 for a family of four. By the end of this year, those figures should reach about $1,300 per citizen, or more than $5,000 for that family of four.
That calculation was based on a very conservative estimate of war costs to date of $204 billion. But even with that low-balling, those billions could have provided health care for 46 million Americans without health insurance, the hiring of 3.5 million elementary school teachers, or the construction of 2 million units of affordable housing. It's money lost in the fog of war -- or perhaps it will be used to do wonderful things for us all by Halliburton and the other defense contractors and private militaries being paid to make Iraq into Iowa with oil.
One final point. One of the lessons we supposedly learned in Vietnam was that foreign intervention can no longer prevail in civil wars. I happened to run into a couple of Americans just back from Iraq, one of whom had also served as a U.S. Marine officer in Vietnam. Their verdict on what was happening in Iraq now was: "Well, we're exactly where we were determined not to be. We're in the middle of a civil war."
Gas prices are a lot higher than before we went into Iraq. But of course the two things aren't connected in any way.
we need some explanations or else the kitties will come out.
I agree
How much did 9/11 cost?
That's a lot of money. Much of which has gone down the drain as we have "reconstructed" Iraq only to see the grateful Iraqis blow it up again.
You again.
In every which way, the "religion of peace" is costing us a lot. Iraq is just another example of how that whole region of the world is a cesspool and a lost cause.
or my choice - lowering of our criminally heavy tax burden. Significant new tax cuts are out of the question because of the Iraq war. In fact, the Iraq war is helping Democrats argue against extending the temporary cuts Bush already got enacted
The Mooselimbs are just beginning. Hopefully Europe is catching on.
If the UN can get it's ass in gear maybe it's avoidable. Don't count on it.
I take it that you can't argue with what's in the article -- it's a plain fact that the war is costing at least $1 billion a week -- so you resort to name-calling. I'm sure there will be a lot of sputtering and name-calling on this thread. People don't like to read the expensive truth about this bone-headed invasion.
Wow!
It's always him. As regular as a bowel movement or a DNC blast fax.
But his name sure sounds conservative! (just don't ask him how much WWII cost)
How much did WWI and WWII cost? These aren't the only two wars we've ever taken part in. Did these people ATTEND a history class when they were in school? Were they awake?
It's just fascinating how these people have zero historical perspective beyond the last 30 years of world history.
This is money well spent.
More teachers, health care, and all the rest doesn't matter if you are dead.
I'd rather be alive and paying soldiers to blow apart extremists, thank you very much!
"Civil War"?
I thought it was "Bush's War"? Just can't keep up with all these nuances.
This is at the same level as trying to compare the rate of U.S. casualties to those in Vietnam. It's a waste of ink by somebody stuck in 1968.
That's BS.
The truth is that the war is costing about 5% of American families many thousands more, and costing most Americans a few dozen dollars more. Seriously.
That is the sad state of the distribution of the American tax burden these days.
Stories like this are intended to get people who don't even pay taxes all heated up as if Bush is taking money that would otherwise be transferred to them and wasting it in the Middle East.
Don't get sucked into that trap.
My family considers it money well-spent.
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