December 4, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Now and Forever
By BOB HERBERT
Most of the time we pretend it’s not there: The staggering financial cost of the war in Iraq, which continues to soar, unchecked, like a rocket headed toward the moon and beyond.
Early last year, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the “true” cost of the war would ultimately exceed $1 trillion, and maybe even $2 trillion.
Incredibly, that estimate may have been low.
A report prepared for the Democratic majority on the Joint Economic Committee of the House and Senate warns that without a significant change of course in Iraq, the long-term cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could head into the vicinity of $3.5 trillion. The vast majority of those expenses would be for Iraq.
Priorities don’t get much more twisted. A country that can’t find the money to provide health coverage for its children, or to rebuild the city of New Orleans, or to create a first-class public school system, is flushing whole generations worth of cash into the bottomless pit of a failed and endless war.
“The No. 1 reason that the war in Iraq should end,” said Senator
Charles Schumer, chairman of the joint committee, “is the loss of life
that is occurring without accomplishing any of the goals that even
President Bush put forward.”
But “right below that,” he said, is the need to stop squandering
incredible amounts of money that could be put to better use — helping
to “make people’s lives better” — here at home. That colossal and
continuing waste, he said, “should cause anxiety in anyone who cares
about the future of this country. I know it causes me anxiety.”
President Bush’s formal funding requests for Iraq have already
exceeded $600 billion. In addition to that, the report offers estimates
of the war’s “hidden costs” from its beginning to 2017: the long-term
costs of treating the wounded and disabled; interest and other costs
associated with borrowing to finance the war; the money needed to
repair or replace military equipment; the increased costs of military
recruitment and retention; and such difficult to gauge but very real
costs as the loss of productivity from those who have been killed or
wounded.
What matters more than the precision of these estimates
(Republicans are not happy with them) is the undeniable fact that the
costs associated with the Iraq war are huge and carry with them
enormous societal consequences.
Far from seeking a halt to the war, the Bush administration has
been considering a significant U.S. military presence in Iraq that
would last for many years, if not decades. There has been very little
public discussion and no thorough anualysis of the overall implications
of such a policy.
What is indisputable, however, is that everything associated with
the Iraq war has cost vastly more than the administration’s absurdly
sunny forecasts. The direct appropriations are already roughly 10 times
the amount of the administration’s original estimates of the entire
cost of the war.
Senator Schumer and other Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee
have been trying (not very successfully, so far) to get other policy
makers and the public at large to focus on the sheer insanity of
pumping hundreds of billions — if not trillions — of public dollars
into a failed venture with no end even remotely in view.
There are myriad better ways to use the many millions of dollars
that the U.S. spends on Iraq every day. Two important long-term
investments that come to mind — and that would put large numbers of
Americans to work — are the development of a serious strategy for
achieving energy independence over the next several years and the
creation of a large-scale program for rebuilding the aging American
infrastructure.
To get to those, or any number of other important initiatives, the
country’s leaders will have to somehow get past their bizarre
reluctance to end this debilitating war.
I asked Senator Schumer how soon he thought U.S. forces should
leave Iraq. He said: “You start withdrawing in three months and be out
in a year. In my view, there would be a small force left — 10,000 or
15,000 — to deal with any Al Qaeda camps that might be set up. But
that’s it.”
His words were echoed in another context by Senator Jim Webb, a
Virginia Democrat (and also a member of the Joint Economic Committee),
who said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday that “it’s not in the strategic
interest of the United States” to have a long-term military presence in
Iraq.
Youngsters who were just starting high school when the U.S. invaded
Iraq are in college now. Their children, yet unborn, will be called on
to fork over tax money to continue paying for the war.
Seriously. How long do we want this madness to last?