The number of Americans killed in Iraq has now exceeded the number who died in the 9/11 attacks. And the number of dead American soldiers will soon surpass 3000.
But the "real" cost of the war, without minimizing the military casualties, is the diversion of huge sums of money to the defense establishment, a direct, and perhaps intentional, result of Bush's misadventure in Iraq. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz pegs the true cost of the war at $2.267 trillion, not the $500 billion that many consider the war's pricetag. Stiglitz arrives at his multi-trillion dollar figure by figuring in the "hidden costs" of the war:
"... like disability pay for the wounded, the heightened cost of oil and
losses sustained by not investing the same money back into our own
economy."
That "diversion" of funds to the "welfare" of the military-industrial complex is reason enough to be anti-war. It's also cause to point out the hypocrisy of pro-war conservatives who otherwise favor a smaller, leaner government.
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Paul Krugman comes close to doing just that in his column, "A Failed Revolution", criticizing Republican apologists for their recent electoral defeat. The conservative "revolution", which reached a sort of zenith in 1994, is based on the "lie" of small government, a lie that's been vigorously re-propagated since the November electoral debacle for Republicans.
I believe, and I think Krugman does too, that the Republican defeat in November was all about Iraq.
"Without 9/11, the
Republican revolution would probably have petered out quietly, with the
loss of Congress in 2002 and the White House in 2004. Instead, the
atrocity created a window of opportunity: four extra years gained by
drowning out unfavorable news with terror alerts, starting a gratuitous
war, and accusing Democrats of being weak on national security."
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Of course not all conservatives supported the war in Iraq, Pat Buchanan being one of them. But Buchanan is not an "anti-war" conservative; he's more an isolationist, who nevertheless continues to defend America's involvement in Vietnam. Like Henry Kissinger*, who it turns out has advised Bush on Iraq much as he advised Nixon on Vietnam, Buchanan denies similarities between the two most egregious foreign policy missteps in American history.
But the similarities are there. The lessons that the warmongers didn't learn from Vietnam, George W. Bush foremost among them, are being driven home by the "quagmire" of our occupation of Iraq. In his op-ed piece, "Lesson of Iraq Began in Vietnam", John Graham writes that like "Vietnamization", which he calls a "rigged game", the slow withdrawal of our forces from Iraq is designed to accomplish the same political end --to support the lie that "vietnamization" --or in this case, "Iraqization"-- has some chance of success:
"Now the Iraq Study Group suggests the same strategy for Iraq. The
group wants to shift the mission of U.S. forces there from fighting a
war to training Iraqi troops and police. The report calls for the U.S.
to lay down a series of performance conditions for the Iraqis,
including that the Iraqis end their civil war and create a viable
national state."
Rational observers realize there's no chance of ending the civil war in Iraq, with or without the continued presence of American troops. I say it's time to call it good. Call it mission accomplished. Saddam has been deposed and executed. It's over.
It's time to stop pouring our money and resources into an obviously failed venture. For those of you worried about Iran or Turkey or Syria filling the void we've created in Iraq, at least accept Murtha's proposal for redeployment into Jordan or Kuwait. And don't forget the American military presence in the Persian Gulf.
Learn the lesson of Vietnam. The world didn't end after our withdrawal. In fact, the world's a better place because of it.
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* Henry Kissinger on the difference between Vietman and Iraq in a recent CNN interview:
"Vietnam did not have -- at least it didn't have, after 1968, in the
last phase of the war, an internal insurrection. Most of the combat was
between outside North Vietnamese forces and the local South Vietnamese
forces.
The "last phase of the war" lasted another six years, and was accompanied by the massive "secret" bombing of Cambodia, which led directly to the rise of Pol Pot.
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