$3 Trillion... And Counting

Bill Moyers filed this report on PBS on the costs of the war last May-



Since then, things have gotten worse. The U.S. has bought up or bribed both sides of the insurgency-- funding both sides of a war being a American tradition-- just so that U.S. politicians can brag about figleaf security gains in an election season. No political progress has been made in Iraq, according to our own government's set benchmarks, and they just gave a rhetorical "fuck you" to our President by rolling out the red carpet for the man Bush calls the greatest threat to world peace. It seems that there will 8,000 more troops in Iraq after the surge than there were before it. And the administration is quietly laying the groundwork for a permanent U.S. presence (without the authorization of Congress).

But on top of all that is the news that the true costs of this will be... $3 trillion dollars. This estimate may end up looking conservative. After all, it was less than a year ago that a $1.4 trillion price tag was feared as the worst-case scenario.

The article on all this reminds readers of the lies of a cheap and quick war that the Bush administration used to sell all of this to begin with. After all, they ask, would Americans be willing to support wars so easily if they knew in advance the long costs ahead... in dollars, years, and lives?

As is standard when looking over this hefty bill, they look at what that $$ could've gone to-

For example, the state I live in, California, is suffering a serious budget crisis that has resulted in major cuts in education and other areas. California has a vast economy, and the shortfall is massive: $3.3 billion. That's a lot of money -- but just reallocating about one week's worth of Iraq funding would wipe it out.

Domestically, the authors note that a trillion dollars could have fixed the Social Security crisis for 50 years, built 8 million housing units, or hired 15 million public schoolteachers for a year.

Abroad, "[t]wo trillion dollars would enable us to meet our commitments to the poorest countries for the next third of a century." For a "mere" $8 billion, the cost of two weeks of the war, we could have fully funded the world campaign to eradicate illiteracy. And imagine the benefits if we had used some of that money for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East that "might actually have succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of the people there."

And here's the thing... any time a politician proposes some new domestic initiative-- health-care, Social Security solvency, alternative energy, infrastructure repair-- the proposal is nickel-and-dimed to death, and deemed too expensive and rash. Such scrutiny is never applied to war spending, which exceeds all of those. Dare to question our endless funneling of trillions down the Iraq sinkhole, and you are accused by the Republicans of wanting our troops to die. Don't worry about the cost of freedom, we are told, our grandkids and/or China will pay the bill.

In a recent campaign roundup video, TPM featured a reader feedback, who said: "The way I see it, we have three alternatives. One, we can leave now and things will completely blow up over there. Two, we can leave in a few years, and things will completely blow up over there. Or three, we can stay, and things will completely blow up over here, as our infrastructure collapses." I agree. And a big part of this election will be voters deciding which of those three (shitty) options they prefer.

As Moyers says, we're nowhere near finished with the costs of this war.

[Related reading: McCain's Consistent Folly on Iraq-- Wrong in 2003, wrong now, and still getting praised for it (Reason magazine)]