What has been the effect on weakening the Camp of Islam and Jihad by spending this $880 billion in Iraq, and how else might it have been spent to weaken that Camp?
For example, some of it could have been spent on the building of nuclear plants (on the model of what the French government has done), on subsidies to solar and wind energy projects, or for mass transit. Suppose $300 billion had been spent on all that?
And suppose some of the rest had been spent on propaganda, broadcasting akin to Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, not to tell Muslims how much we like and respect them, nor how well-off Muslims are in our country, but rather to tell other Infidels about Jihad News around the globe (the kind of thing one finds gathered at Jihad Watch every day, but on a much larger scale, disseminated hither and yon).
Or what if the American government had also beamed into Muslim countries the voices of Wafa Sultan and Ali Sina and Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, both in English and whatever other languages they choose to broadcast in, about their own "spiritual journey" out of Islam? What if there were, on these satellite channels beamed into Dar al-Islam, discussions by scientists on what is necessary for the development of science -- the free and skeptical inquiry so discouraged, even punished, in Islam? What if there were figurative artists and sculptors and art historians discussing their art, and the lack of such means of expression in Islam? What if archaeologists came on to discuss how the civilizations of the Near East were rediscovered not by the Muslims, but by such Westerners as the Assyriologist Austen Henry Layard, and Leonard Woolley at Ur, and a succession of Egyptologists -- Champollion, Lepsius, Howard Carter -- from everywhere but Egypt itself?
But there is no propaganda campaign. There is no large-scale effort, or even a small-scale effort, or even the hint of serious imposition of taxes by the American government on gasoline and on oil, to do as much damage to OPEC, and to raise the price of oil and gasoline as much as possible, thereby to encourage conservation and new technologies and new sources of energy.
No.
There is only the idiotic squandering of men, money, and matériel, on and on and on, world without end, in Iraq, to bring "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Muslim Middle East, and somehow to make of Iraq a unified state, instead of what we should be wanting, which is to create a permanent fault line between Shi'a and Sunni running north and west of Baghdad, a line that the Sunnis will never acquiesce in.
Oh, it's a policy all right. It's Boots on the Ground. It's soldiers, taught never to question but only to execute. It's destruction of morale, military (at least among the soldiers who can think for themselves, can take in the nature of Islam, and of Iraq, and of Iraqis) and civilian (ditto). It's not the way to combat, it does nothing to halt, the instruments of Jihad that really count: Da'wa, demographic conquest, and the money weapon.
It's a policy begun by those who did not know about Islam and about Iraq, and still refuse to learn. It makes no sense.
Did I mention that in January 2006 the economist Joseph Stiglitz, with a collaborator Linda Bilmes, estimated the cost of the war at between one and two trillion dollars? Or that this past January, Linda Bilmes offered different estimates, based on different assumptions, for the lifetime costs of caring for those wounded in Iraq, and for that alone came up with a separate figure (google "Linda Bilmes" and "Iraq War") of several hundred billion?
The 2 trillion dollar figure was admittedly calculated on the basis of macroecnomic costs (such as changes in the price of oil) and I left those out of my own figure because I assume that at this point an American withdrawal will not cause the price of oil to go down, given a hoped-for continued instability. On the other hand, as you know, during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, from 1980 to 1988, the price of oil steadily declined.
I think the war will certainly top one trillion dollars. And the only way to get a return on our investment is to make sure nothing is done by the Americans to prevent those Sunni-Shi'a hostilities from continuing, and having spillover effects elsewhere. We need, we deserve, a return on this fantastic investment.
Monies have not been spent in that direction to date, and will not be spent in that direction in the future simply because the people who allocate those funds, namely the President and Congress, are still in the mind set that has them fighting a tactic, (Terror), and not a socio-political belief, (Islam-Totalitarianism). Also, these very same people have vested interests,(Big Oil, Automakers and conglomerates), who would be the big losers in Americans becoming energy independent.
But that change, although it may seem distant now, is but around the corner. Who in 1936 would have accepted anyone casting aspersions on Germany? They had just hosted the Olympics, come back from a horrible war defeat and subsequent economic depression. Why, the majority asked then, are you knocking the Germans? National Socialism is the saving grace and it's probably what the whole world needs. Today little children are taught that Nazis were bad without even explaining to them the reasons why. Fascism, in whatever it choses to dress itself up in, whether it's nationalistic politics or a religion, is the evil that must be confronted. Unless we frame it in those terms to the uninformed, the message will again come off as "Why are you picking on them?" Pardon the reuse of the tired old cliche but, "It's Fascism, stupid."
We are starting to build a few nuclear power plants. The reasons we haven't until just recently built any new nuclear power plants since 1996 (a period of time far before 9/11 and the Iraq war) have nothing to do with money.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors/reactsum.html
Try building a power plant and watch the kooks come out, protestors, journalist, environmentalists, , regulators, politicians, etc.
We need to use nuclear power more extensively. Our Navy relies on it safely and effectively. The French and Japanese both use it safely and effectively. It is only the lowest form of uneducated useful idiots in the US who keep us from using it.
Again, nothing to do with the Iraq war or with the cost of the Iraq war.
Our government wastes so much money as it is. The democratic Congress would use the money to build more bridges to nowhere, study the mating habits of obscure rodents, and otherwise waste the money anyway.
The financial cost of the War is almost a trivial side issue.
Someone created a web site where people could give their suggestions of what America could have spent 500 billion dollars on. Some of the ideas are really funny ... consider the Twinky suggestion.
See: www.500billion.com
I wish someone would post this on that faux conservative website Freerepublic.com...but it would probably get them banned (like every opinion that isn't rah-rah War in Iraq or rah-rah Bush)
I think the war has been a bargain. We’ve got $9 trillion of debt on the books and somewhere in the range of $70 trillion in unfunded liabilities, rising by $3 trillion each year. $1 trillion is nothing, it is about one half of this year’s federal social spending.
$1 trillion has bought us a ring-side seat to watch Islam unbridled. The war effort has allowed leaders to emerge that are educating the American population about the teachings of Mohammed and the history of his cult. As our pure democratic system collapses, this education will prove valuable in protecting our culture.
$1 trillion is about $3,300 a head for a five year immersion course. Harvard charges $40,000 a year and you learn nothing. I’ll bet that when the smoke clears, we’ll own a number of oil-rich islands in the Persian Gulf to boot.
Thoughts with the military families who are making the sacrifices.
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t51544.html
pez-
Can those of us who were already arguing this long before 9/11 get our $11,000 back?
I could use a little seed money for an ongoing project.
But I agree with your thinking.
Education this vital had to come from some dramatic source, because the schools have been suicidally whitewashing Islam's true nature for decades.
This conflict has at least pulled off the mask of "they want the same things we do" (Bush's delusional slogan).
People in the west have attacked the mistaken messenger (Bush) but continue to miss the import of the message (these people are crazy ingrates).
Our military has gotten a close-up look at the jihadis, and that, alone, was worth the price of admission.
Tactics and methods learned will pay great dividends in the decades to come.
The soldiers have been far greater than the indecisive people at home deserve.
May the next Adminstration take off the gloves an attack the roots of the Jihad (Saudis, Pakistani madrassas, et al) and initiate an Energy Freedom Program to unleash our native inventive ingenuity at home and to unchain us from oil payments to terroristic states abroad.
TYPO-
"...get our $16,000 back..."
(Don't want to shortchange anybody.)
"Meade will come in slowly, cautiously, new to command... And then, after Lee's army is entrenched behind nice fat rocks, Meade will attack finally, if he can coordinate the army. He'll attack right up that rocky slope, and up that gorgeous field of fire. And we will charge valiantly, and be butchered valiantly. And afterwards men in tall hats and gold watch fobs will thump their chest and say what a brave charge it was. Devin, I've led a soldier's life, and I've never seen anything as brutally clear as this." from the movie Gettysburg (Union Brig. Gen. John Buford (played by Sam Elliott))
One the best quotes from that movie and best sums of the battle in Iraq. What a waste of fighting men for men with executive haircuts and gold wristwatches. Bush and Cheney have done a enough chest thumping and talked enough about bravery. It is time they do their jobs and if not may history judge them for what they were.
Iraq is a pointless battle faught over useless ground. The overall war will not be decided in the sands of Iraq one way or the other. For all those who keep pushing all the elaborate ways to stay there such as the "honey pot" strategy and the "Islamic experience" strategy as if this is a school room please just keep the quote above in your mind. Men sign up to fight for this nation but they also expect their leaders to do everything they can do to make sure they are put in the best possible situation to win. They will die for this nation but wasting them is not what they signed up for. If they are willing to put their lives in harms way is not up for us to make sure their battle is worth their lives.
I am sorry I just don't. Iraq is of no military importance.
"If our soldiers are not overburdened with money, it is not because they have a distaste for riches; if their lives are not unduly long, it is not because they are disinclined to longevity." Sun Tzu, Art of War
Let's see, $880 billion buys 35.2 million Toyota Priuses at $25 k apiece(maybe more if we negotiate a volume discount). If each saves about 20 mpg on a car driven 15,000 miles annually, that's about 630 million barrels (42 gallons to the barrel), or 1.7 million barrels per day. That's roughly 15% of U.S. gasoline consumption, or 2% of worldwide oil demand. That doesn't sound like much, but a look at OPEC's history shows they've squabbled over production cuts less than that. In commodity markets it can sometimes take less than that to change momentum...after all its the incremental barrel that sets the price.
Oh well.
880 billion may seem like an astronomical amount of money, but you have to see it in context. In America, everything is writ large. In the four years that this war has been on, American has spent 10 billion just on toilet paper. (It is a 2.5 billion dollar annual industry.) That doesn't include toilet bowl cleaner, or those blue things we put in the tank to get that nice blue color - billions more for that.
Ten billion dollars is a lot of money. But in America, since this war started, we've use ten billion just on tissue to wipe our asses.