Spring Break
From the surge to the splurge: The unending war in Iraq
Robert Zaller
Issue date: 3/14/08 Section: Ed-Op
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Instead, Congress joined Bush in approving plans to expand the war and extend it indefinitely. They called it the surge. Call it, now, the splurge.
In fall 2006, the conventional wisdom was that we would have to begin drawing down our forces in Iraq early in 2007 because of rotation requirements. Along came the surge, which was going to push the date back three months (or was it six?) to give what Bush likes to refer to as the "young democracy" in Baghdad time to get its boots on.
Instead of pulling troops out, we would increase their numbers by 30,000 in an effort to pacify the capitol at least. This itself would take time; the military was stretched so thin that scrounging up a few more combat brigades would take six months, from January to June. Only then would we be able to test the possibilities of success. But Bush refused to define what "success" might mean, and Congress, after a few half-hearted attempts to attach concrete goals to its war appropriation bills (after five years, there is still no regular budgeting for Iraq, nor any demand that the administration produce it), gave the president his green light to nowhere.
We are still on that road.
We are coming up on 4,000 war dead. Add another 1,000 for American mercenaries who now make up nearly as large a force as the regular military, and who answer to no code of war but the profit motive.
Four thousand dead means 40,000 casualties. Add to that the 130,000 troops recently reported to have suffered permanent hearing loss in combat. And the hundreds of thousands more who bear the scars of what used to be called shell-shock, but is now more soothingly known as post-traumatic stress syndrome. They're beginning to pile up on our street corners, another generation of the lost and discarded.
That's the splurge in lives.
The splurge in dollars is equally impressive. The initial cost estimate of the war was $50 billion - more or less analogous to the cost of what used to be the annual two-week vacation in a family's budget. (Americans no longer take two-week vacations.)
When Larry Lindsey, one of Bush's advisors, incautiously suggested that the actual price tag might be $200 billion, he was immediately sacked.
Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz now estimates the likely cost of the war at between $1.7 and $2.7 trillion, not counting more than $800 billion in debt service. Of course, we're still counting.
So, what are we getting for our blood and money? I mean, outside of shame, dishonor, and the abiding contempt of the civilized world?
Iraq's so-called government is a leisure class living on the bounty of the American taxpayers. Tens of billions of dollars have literally disappeared down the rat holes created by our corrrupt and corrupting war. A long-delayed plan to hold elections in Iraq's provinces, where lawless militias and fanatical mullahs hold sway, was derailed as soon as it was approved. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has just finished hosting an elaborate love-fest for our "Public Enemy No. 1," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, smiling like Sunday while the world's favorite Holocaust denier suggested that American troops pull out of Iraq.
What? How can Maliki, whose personal security we guarantee every day, get away with that?
Easy, if you're the puppet who's learned how to pull his master's strings. Maliki knows that no matter what he or anyone else does, Bush is committed to maintaining the maximum possible American force presence in Iraq until he leaves office. There was no drawdown in 2007; there will be none, as Bush has recently assured us, in 2008. Iraq's young democracy will be given all the time it needs to rake in all the cash we are willing to pour into it, and to stockpile as many weapons as it will need for the bang-up civil war that will be its grand finale.
Any fool can see this. So what are Bush's enablers in Congress doing about it?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid feel entirely secure in their posture of moral cowardice. They figure that the country will have no choice but to elect more Democrats in November. They know that the only way they can lose is by by defunding the war and risk taking the blame for "losing" Iraq. They were unwilling to do that last year; they are even less likely to do it in an election year.
Blood is on their hands. It's called politics.
Robert Zaller is a professor of history. He can be reached at ed-op@thetriangle.org.
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