Today is the fifth anniversary of the U.S. (and coalition of the willing) invaision of Iraq. The human millitary cost is nearing 4,000 men and the length of the Mission is lasted longer than World War II.
The cost in treasure (dollars) is also extensive, as Democratic candidates for president have tried to make on the campaign trail. Republican Presidential candidate John McCain was in Iraq this week speaking on the need to continue the operation, though he missed spoke on a connection between Iran and Al Qaeda.
Nobel Prize winning economist Joesph Stiglitz (who many of us read this summer) says the cost of the Iraq War could surpass $3 trillion.
By the Pentagon's count, 527 billion dollars were allocated from September 2001 through 
December 2007 to finance the war against terrorism, including 406 billion dollars for Iraq.
December 2007 to finance the war against terrorism, including 406 billion dollars for Iraq.The Congressional Budget Office reported in October 2007 that Iraq accounts for 421 billion, or 70 percent, of the 602 billion dollars that the Congress has authorized for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The CBO estimates that the total cost of the two wars could reach 2.4 trillion dollars by 2017 including interest on the debt, with Iraq accounting for 70 percent of the spending, or 1.68 trillion dollars.
But even that pales by comparison with estimates put forward by Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard professor, in a book called "The Three Trillion Dollar War: the True Cost of the Iraq Conflict."
According to the authors, the United States is spending 12 billion dollars a month in 2008 to prosecute the war in Iraq. When Afghanistan is included, US war spending bumps up to 16 billion dollars a month.
Looking out to 2017, they contend the conflict will cost more than three trillion dollars.
They argue that administration cost estimates omit several crucial factors: bonuses offered to attract and retain troops; health coverage for veterans, replacing military equipment; and the impact of the war on the price of oil, which in five years has soared from 25 to more than 100 dollars a barrel.
They argue that administration cost estimates omit several crucial factors: bonuses offered to attract and retain troops; health coverage for veterans, replacing military equipment; and the impact of the war on the price of oil, which in five years has soared from 25 to more than 100 dollars a barrel.
12 comments:
I'll certainly say this: We majorly screwed up our strategy. What we've been doing in the past year is what we should have been doing five years ago. We should have had more troops on the ground, we should have had plans in place for counterinsurgency operations, we should have had plans in place for dealing with refugees (including taking them into the U.S.), and we should have worked on our PR (although right now the insurgents are losing the PR battle). Five years later, Anbar, Basra, and other provinces are under Iraqi control, and the Kurds aren't doing badly. I read a report in the Wall Street Journal on displaced Iraqis. The numbers are declining a little, and a major chunk come from Baghdad, not the other provinces. We've finally found a strategy that works. Better late than never. What should be done now is to pour as many available resources as possible into alleviating the logistic issues in Iraq. Private corporations such as GE or United Technologies have the resources to do a lot of this on their own, so if we brought them in, that could free up government spending a little. With Ahmadinejad going bozo, we need as many allies in the Middle East as possible, and Iraq and Afghanistan put a pretty strong check against Iran, albeit not a checkmate. The best way to look at Iraq is this: If you're helping someone to rebuild their house and spill a bucket of paint, you don't leave and let them deal with it; you clean it up yourself. Iraq is our mess, we need to clean it up. A lot of people have been talking about the long-term results of leaving Vietnam. Remember, another stable state existed and was able to impose its authority on South Vietnam, hence stability. And the only reason Vietnam gets along well with us now is because they didn't get along at all with the Russians and Chinese. That was more luck of the draw than anything else. The situation in Iraq is different. Iran is much more dangerous (and in a position to be more so) than North Vietnam was. Iran could disrupt oil and other trade and anti-Americanism/anti-Europeanism is more firmly established there than in North Vietnam, which was off in a quiet corner where it couldn't do much. Rationality will not save us. We cannot and should not leave Iraq until we clean up the mess we made.
I'm in total agreement with Garret on this one, and I'm not sure if I could have said it much better myself. From my perspective, the question of whether or not we were right to go into Iraq initially has become an irrelevant issue when considering what we ought to do there now. Whether or not you consider this war just or unjust, there's no denying that Iraq's future is now our responsibly. As Garret said, it's our mess, we're responsible for cleaning it up. And in my view, the best way of doing that is to keep some sort of military presence in Iraq until the Iraqi government has proven itself capable of self-defense.
I disagree with all of you about the current view of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The original reason to invade is NOT “pointless” and it is NOT “irrelevant.” You are falling into a 21st century American attitude that says “OK we screwed up - big deal, what do we do now?” The 2003 Iraq invasion was a mistake and the rest of the world tried to tell us so at the time. So what did President Bush do? He thumbed his nose at all of them and said we’re going in with or without you.
Lost in all of the statistics of the blog is the number of Iraqi citizens who have died. According to Iraq Body Count (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/), between 82,249 and 89,760 Iraqis have died since the invasion. I hold the blood these people and 4000 brave American service men and women on the hands of President Bush and his cronies. America has done many decent and noble things in its history, but President Bush represents everything that is disgraceful and shameful about America. I am counting the days until he leaves office.
I think what I was trying to say may have been misinterpreted. So I'll try to clear that up. What I was trying to say is that whether or not you think this war was just from the start, in order to address the problems of the present we need to be looking to what will be best for Iraq's future, rather than focusing on the past. Although we certainly need to take into account the actions of the past, and we need to thoroughly assess and evaluate them, we can't let that shift the focus away from what is best for Iraq at the present moment. We need to assess the present conditions in the country and then do what's best for the security and safety of Iraq now. What I'm advocating is not admitting a mistake and complacently settling for the status quo. I'm saying that we need to take responsibility for our actions and make the best of the situation as things currently stand. And in my opinion, the best way of doing that is to continue to have a military presence in Iraq until the government has proven it can be self-sustaining.
As kind of a side note, I think that the Iraqi government needs to be restructured according to a more federalist model in order to allow for greater regional autonomy. This could help alleviate many of the ethic conflicts that have put the government at an impasse and have limited the state's ability to effectively govern. Or at the very least, the Kurds and the Sunnis need to somehow get more of a voice in the policymaking process.
Well, I never think that it is the place of Nation A to dominate Nation B just because they don't really like where Nation B's going. It's not an attitude of respect, cooperation, or help; it's an attitude of bigoted imperialism.
I would not relate it to helping a neighbor paint their house. It's more like sneaking out in the night and painting your neighbor's house because you don't like the color, only to find in the morning that you screwed it up somehow. Is the person who screwed up the paint the first time around really the person we want to entrust the job of fixing the paint to?
It would be incredibly ideal if a UN associated body had enough authority (and equality of member state participation) to help the Iraqis out instead of the US. But of course I mean "incredibly" in the literal sense of the word. If this were to happen though, it would make me feel a lot better about the situation for several reasons. As it is, Iraq is dependent upon their invaders for stability, setting them up to be dependents for the indefinite future (which is not fair to them and would interfere with their sovereignty and development). I certainly don't want to see a repeat of the US putting yet another ruler in charge of a country in the hopes of using them as a puppet (though just looking at history, something tells me that was probably one of the intents of invasion). And the list of potential dangers of putting the recuperation of one nation entirely in the hands of another goes on. This is why I am skeptical that staying for a prolonged period of time (even though the violence and disorder is slightly fading) will "fix" things the way that some of you think it will.
Although I am in full support of our troops, I must say that the administartion has majorly screwed up this war. Just as the controversial cartoon with Rumsfield and an amputee soilder shows, the Bush administration has caused America not only great lost, in both lives and money, but has done little to improve the situation in the Middle East. Five years later, this is no longer a war, but an occupation, and I think it is in our best intrest to slowly pull out and let the people of the Iraq rebuild their country. Although this seems harsh, there is little the US, with limited resources and troops, can do.
Jeremy & Sreeharsha,
Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sam Brownback (R) co-authored the amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill last fall that would mandate a federalist government in Iraq.
Biden wrote on the Huffington Post:
"...It calls for helping Iraqis implement their own Constitution, which provides for any of Iraq's 18 provinces to form regions and sets out the extensive powers of those regions and the limited powers of the central government. The result could be three regions, or four or five or more. It will be up to the Iraqi people.
"Second, the amendment is not a foreign imposition. Iraqis already have made the decision to decentralize in their Constitution and federalism law. My amendment is about what the United States should do to help promote a political settlement consistent with these Iraqi decisions. Again, it will be up to the Iraqis. But the idea that the United States -- with 160,000 troops in Iraq, 3,804 dead and nearly 28,000 wounded -- does not have a right and responsibility to voice its views and to push for a political settlement is absurd."
"The Bush administration is pursuing a fatally flawed policy in trying to create a strong central government in Iraq. There has been no significant reconciliation at the national level and there is no evidence that it will happen any time soon. Insisting on this failed approach will prolong and deepen Iraq's civil war, lead to a wider regional war, and irresponsibly increase the danger to over 160,000 American troops who are caught in the middle."
You can read Biden's entire post on his Federalist postion on Iraq at:
www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-biden/setting-the-record-straig_b_66790.html
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