2006-04-25
Unbelievable: Iraq War = $1 Trillion
There are many uncertainties about the progress made by coalition forces and the future prospects for stability and democracy in Iraq, but there is at least one indisputable fact: The Bush administration vastly underestimated the costs of the Iraq war. Not only in human lives, but in monetary terms as well, the costs of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq far exceed the administration’s initial projection of a $50 billion tab. While the number of American casualties in Iraq has declined this year, the amount of money spent to fight the war and rebuild the country has spiralled upward.
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3 comments:
I admit that the war has cost much more than I expected, and much more than Bush promised. I also believe that Bush could have waged a much more effective operation, especially by making zero torture a paramount objective.
But what do we know do with the old leftist criticism of how previous administrations had supported, tolerated, or merely conducted business with despotic regimes? Was Reagan correct, afterall, to not intervene when the evacuation by the USSR left Afgahnistan to get transformed into a 2000 equivilant of 1800 Mississippi? Should Reagan have not supported local Afgahnis to oust the USSR? Should he have not intervened to ensure that self-rule -- rather than despot-rule -- emerged in its wake? That was the origial leftist chant after 911: that Reagan "just left" Afgahnis at the mercy of the Taliban monsters.
In any case, the biggest culprits in the current Iraq situation is not the people trying to erect a democracy, but rather the monsters vying for a gangsterdom.
Carter should not have allowed the State dept. and CIA to use Afghanistan as a pawn to attack the USSR in the first place. Reagan was guilty of many more egregious military offenses than his inaction in Afghanistan (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Zaire, Angola, etc.)
The biggest monsters in the Iraq situation are the pirates in the Bush regime (and Clinton regime) and their supporters who conspired to rape and pillage the people of Iraq in the first place.
Nadir: I am not certain that you are wrong, that the US should have offered no opposition to the USSR invasion of Afgahnistan; I am not certain that isolationism is incorrect... or correct. Both models make sense to me. Thus I support the implimentation of either one. My discontent with the repos has me leaning towards voting Libertarian next time.
If you weanies regain the white house and congress, I will be very eager to see isolationism have its chance.
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