On Netscape.com this morning I was naturally intruiged when I saw these two headlines at the top of the heap:
Of course the first thought in my head was how these two items were obviously connected, but as I went into the Iraq article I found a poll. I voted, and the results, while not surprising, still stunned me with their overwhelming one-sidedness. (I took this snapshot at about 9:17am today.)
I’m no statistician, but I think a sampling of that size is considered pretty accurate.
I actually posted this $12 billion figure before, back in July of ‘07. Of course it’s always a good reminder, though, as I don’t really feel that money coming out of my wallet, although, of course, it is. And yours, too. (We’ve been rather brilliantly conditioned by the government to think that it’s OK that they take it from us in the first place, don’t you think?)
A little further down the Iraq article, I found these paragraphs, which I found most profound:
These numbers don’t include the war’s cost to the rest of the world.
In Iraq itself, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion [included] devastating air bombardments and the looting and arson that followed, severely damaged electricity and other utilities, the oil industry, countless factories, hospitals, schools and other underpinnings of an economy.
‘No one has tried to calculate the economic damage done to Iraq,’ said spokesman Niels Buenemann of the International Monetary Fund, which closely tracks national economies. But millions of Iraqis have been left without jobs, and hundreds of thousands of professionals, managers and other middle-class citizens have fled the country.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: what are we doing?
One more quote from the article “Defining Victory Downward” by Slate writer Michael Kinsley:
Why was President Bush’s decision a year ago to send another 30,000 troops to Iraq called the “surge”? I don’t know who invented this label, but the word surge evokes images of the sea: a wave that sweeps in, and then sweeps back out again. The second part was crucial. What made the surge different from your ordinary troop deployment was that it was temporary. In fact, the surge was presented as part of a larger plan for troop withdrawal. It was also, implicitly, part of a deal between Bush and the majority of Americans who want out. The deal was: just let me have a few more soldiers to get Baghdad under control, and then everybody, or almost everybody, can pack up and come home.
In other words: you have to increase the troops in order to reduce them. This is so perverse on its face that it begins to sound zenlike and brilliant, like something out of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. And in Gen. David Petraeus, the administration conjured up its own Sun Tzu, a brilliant military strategist.
[But] the test is simple, and built into the concept of a surge: has it allowed us to reduce troop levels to below where they were when it started? The answer is no. The proper comparison isn’t to the situation a year ago. It’s to the situation before we got there.
Imagine that you had been told in 2003 that when George W. Bush finished his second term, dozens of American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis would be dying violently every month; that a major American goal would be getting the Iraqi government to temper its “de-Baathification” campaign so that Saddam Hussein’s former henchmen could start running things again (because they know how); and “only” 100,000 American troops would be needed to sustain this equilibrium.
You might have several words to describe this situation, but success would not be one of them.”
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Definitely not worth it! The reason the US Military is in Iraq is to force the country to continue pumping oil in US Dollars, & to threaten Iran to do the same by force. The USD is the world reserve currency right now, and has been since the early 1970’s. The US Government made a deal with OPEC to protect it’s oil rights in exchange for this “world reserve currency” status. You can call it the “Oil Cartel”.
You know, I would almost buy that. The whole war seems so shady and interminable, that one can’t help but wonder about the reasoning behind it all. And I did just read the other day (somewhere) about OPEC’s oil backing the value of the US dollar, and apparently some of the oil peeps are now requesting to trade in Euros… hm, it’s hard not to wonder, eh!?
{hanging head} I have failed, Josh…you bought the lie.
This has never been about oil. What we are doing there is bringing freedom to a country that was enslaved to a wrenched dictator. If people can’t see that, then I have over-estimated the intelligence of my fellow Americans.
Interesting post, but please stop buying the media…and now you know why I can’t stand California (in part, at least).
Well, I do certainly hope our motives are as pure as you think, my friend. I look at all the other stuff going on in the world, though, and it’s just hard for me to believe.
As far as I can tell — when I watch at least — the media seems to be pitching the angle of the story you’re telling, though. And the really interesting part is that I honestly have no contact at all with what I’d call the mainstream media… I get all my news online, which I’m sure is still slanted (as everything is), but hopefully I input from enough sources to get at least a certain amount of truth.
And, though I certainly do not approve of what my state often exports, I also don’t quite know what you mean about Cali…
Well, Cali is often known for buying into stories like this. It’s one of the reasons I wanted out. To many people were buying the mainstream line, without ever considering the facts.
You and I see very different media coverage on this incident. When the war began, the media did cover some of the good. But about a year or 2 into the war (ironically, I think it was around when the campaigns started for the 2004 elections), all you heard was how many people were dieing, how many IEDs went off, how much crap was going on…then the change came. The report came back from General Petraeus saying how we were gaining ground, the attacks were lessening, etc. The media has rarely touched the war since then.
Now, to be clear, I know you are an intelligent guy.
The difficulty here is that you have two sides of the coin…one side is talking loud enough for the whole change purse to hear and the other is just trying to do its job. This side of the coin is trying to bring freedom to others who have been enslaved by dictators. The first side of the coin is trying to be a dictator, but doing so through social welfare programs. Consequently, the first side of the coin hates the other side and is trying to make the whole change purse believe that such altruistic intentions are really a guise for the social-welfare-induced-dictatorship that the first side wants.
I may have confused you a bit, but I think you read that over, you’ll understand what I’m saying…altruism does exist. There are people in positions of authority who’s sole purpose it is to try and make other people’s lives as good as their own by providing the same opportunities they once had.
Additionally, the difficulty with this war is that it cannot be thought of in traditional terms. Traditionally, Country A declared war on Country B. War begins. War ends. One country wins. Now, we are Country A declaring war on Ideology B. So, War begins in Country B, then it has to move to Country C, then it may move to Country D, then while we’re fighting in Country D, Country E’s people who subscribe to Ideology B cross into Country D to fight against us…this is the situation we have. And we are actually winning.
Many have thoughts on how to win this faster, easier, better, but they all end in worse problems, in my opinion. As far as I can tell, this war is being fought as honestly, altruistically, and peaceably as any war has ever been fought.
And as far as the cost of this war? It’s nothing compared to WWII. Yeah, the numbers may look different, but when compared to percentage of GDP, WWII was a much higher cost for, effectively, the same purpose.