Iraq costs

Aside from the cost in blood, this war is also costing us money. Lots of money. Like, two trillion dollars. With a "t".

Here's a story from 2006 pointing out that the war could cost as much as one trillion dollars. Now it's doubled. More interesting is how the Administration originally estimated the whole thing would cost "just" $50 billion. Oops.

Iraq

Even the All Star Game can't distract me completely from the ongoing disaster and tragedy of Iraq.

We're going to lose.

I'd love it if Iraq became a stable democracy, a beacon for human rights and democracy in a region without either.

But it's not going to happen. Not this year, not next, nor the year after that. There are enough people in Iraq who don't want peace they they'll get their wish. It is an ongoing tragedy, but there is nothing we can do about it. Does anyone outside the White House really think that Iraq is going to be a functioning democracy in six months? One year?

If we are going to fail, I'd prefer to fail sooner than later.

We're going to pull out before the job is done. If not this year, than next, or the year after. What we're doing now isn't working. The Democratic party gave up supporting this war long ago. More and more Republicans, to their credit, are finally starting to admit what everyone knows, that it's not working. Most recently, Senator Domenici has joined Republican senators Lugar, Voinovich, Warner, Hagel, Alexander, Gregg, and Gordon Smith in calling for us to pull out.


Unfortunately, history gives us plenty of examples of regions of the world that were drenched by blood in what we would now call a civil war. How long did it take Italians (who were all the same religion!) to form a democracy? Germany? Northern Ireland? The Balkans?

It's time for us to declare victory and bring our troops home.

Pat Tillman

I didn't pay much attention to the whole Pat Tillman saga when it broke. I admit I figured he was a sort of uninteresting meathead football player. Sure it was a tragedy that he died, but I was disgusted by the Administration's war to start with and their hero workship of a dead man made it worse. Then I read this set of stories on ESPN. (Warning: these are long stories. But Pat Tillman's story isn't simple.) I was so, so wrong.

Having read more about him, Pat Tillman sounds like a damn interesting guy. The story is a scathing indictment of an Administration, along with the Army brass, who wanted a hero. It turns out that Tillman did what he wanted to do, but the last thing he wanted was to be their hero.

The fallout continues. It was clear from the ESPN story that the Army lied and lied again. For several generals, it looks like their lies will end their careers. So be it.

All sorts of people (the Army, the Administration, various commentators) have tried to appropriate a piece of Pat Tillman's glory. They're all wrong. He's an American hero, the rare kind who's too authentic to be pigeon-holed.


This is another case of good sportwriting. Kudos to ESPN (!) was going waaaaay outside its bailiwick to bring a story that wasn't really about sports at all, any more than Pat Tillman's life was about sports.

Libby

I haven't paid much attention to the Scooter Libby trial. I figured it wasn't new news--I already believed that the Administration was manipulating intelligence and engaged in character assassination.

However, I did find one thing amusing. Apparently when Cheney read Wilson's op-ed piece that started this whole thing, about Wilson's trip to Niger, Cheney wrote: "did his wife send him on a junket?" on the news clipping.

I've been to Niger. Let me assure you, that no one goes there on a junket. Aren't junkets supposed to be fun? If I ever go on a "junket", I hope it involves sitting on a hot beach in the sun with a cold fruity drink in my hand.

In Niger there's nothing to see, nothing to do. It's hot and dry. There aren't many reasons to go to Niger. And going on a junket surely ain't one of them!

Iraq's civil war

Of course, Iraq is a disaster and a huge mistake. It seems to me that the White House is still fundamentally confused about one simple fact, and until they change their minds, we're going to keep on this same path.

What's the simple fact?

The Administration still approaches Iraq like it's us versus them. It's them versus them.


The Iraqis are not really fighting against us. They're fighting each other. Until the President understands this basic fact, I don't think he's ever going to change course.

Wow. According to an article in the New York Times, different people estimate the cost of the war as between $1,000,000,000,000 and $2,000,000,000,000. (Those are trillions, but it's worth it to write out the zeros).

That's a big heap-a money. What a relief that we don't have any other important needs. Whew!

And obviously this doesn't cover the dead. We've lost 3000 Americans so far and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead as well. We'll be paying for this war for decades.

Well, this is encouraging. (satire!)

We've now hanged three people in Iraq, and one of them has gone correctly.

I do think it's correct to say "we". Granted Iraq has a government, but it depends completely on our support. Without us, it would dissolve. On the Arab street, we get blamed for everything that goes wrong in Iraq. And when we leave, it will dissolve. If anyone thinks Iraq is bad now, just wait until we leave...

Does anyone in the administration notice that we're losing in Iraq?

Maybe I'm not an expert, but I fear we've already lost. We can either admit it now or admit it later, but Iraq is going to dissolve into civil war as soon as we leave.

...and shame, Jean Schmidt, shame.

Bravo, John Murtha. Bravo.

Now this is interesting, on a couple of levels. First, of course, the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin, which is that it never happened. (Sidenote, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed by Congress, gave LBJ the authority to vastly increase US troops in Vietnam.) So Congress was given false information by the administration and based on that false information it approved the administration's decision to go to war. (In Vietnam)

Obviously, the previous sentence could have been written about the present war in Iraq. Which brings up the second level that this new information is interesting. The present administration seems like it's trying to bury the discovery of the 40 year old mistake because the parallels are so obvious that even the President's defenders cannot deny them.


2000 Americans have now died in Iraq. There will be more, unfortunately, many more, sacrificed in a bloody, unwinnable war on the other side of the world. I don't know how many, and I don't know how long it will take, but sooner or later we will pull out of Iraq and then we will wonder what exactly we were doing there in the first place. I have no doubt that in 40 years, the present war in Iraq will be viewed as a serious mistake, just as today the Vietnam War is rightly seen as a mistake. And our children will wonder how it was that America could have so completely failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam.

Yesterday I was talking with someone, someone I know and respect, who still believes there was a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. On the one hand, it's surprising, because it's been well known for over a year that no such link existed. The point isn't even debatable anymore. I mean, more than a year ago, Colin Powell said so in the New York Times. Even Bush admitted it, almost two year ago! But plenty of people still believe it now.

But I made this point before and I'll make it again. It's like the Gulf of Tonkin. The American people were told that our ships had been attacked by the communist Vietnamese. We believed the government. But it never happened.
Same here. We were sold a bill of goods. Well, several bills of goods. One was the Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (remember them?). Another was that Iraq had connections to Al Qaeda. For that matter, another was that the war would be fast a cheap (all together now, "HA HA funny!"). Years later, after untold lives have been lost or ruined, it turns out that they lied to us about the Gulf of Tonkin, and they lied to us about Iraq too. I just hope we're not still there is another ten years.....

It turns out the Iraqis are having a bit of trouble with their constitution. As with so many things (reconstruction, insurgents, democracy, oil, etc. etc. etc.), I think the administration has vastly underestimated the difficulty of this task. True to character, they neglected the difficulties. Had they been paying attention, they may have noticed another country that had its own trouble coming to grip with the issue of federalism. After seven years of failure, they tried again. That didn't really get the job done either--sixty one years later the country nearly destroyed itself in an astonishingly brutal civil war.

The population of the United States was 31 million in 1860, and about 620,000 people died. Iraq has about 26 million people (hey, surely we can trust the CIA about Iraq, right?). I don't know that anyone can really say how many civilians have did, but this site says 25,000. Will Iraq dissolve into civil war? I bet it does, unfortunately. And I bet the issue will be federalism. Just like here.

It sounds like the Iraqi government is making noises about having us leave, as soon as next year. Great! However, if Iraq then dissolves into civil war, have we not failed?

For that matter, if the new Iraqi constitution, written by Iraqis, implements the worst aspects of sharia law, have we really succeeded?

Remember when the reason we went to war in Iraq was because they were hiding weapons of mass destruction? Or remember when the reason we went to war in Iraq was because of the connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden? Or remember when we were at war in Iraq to bring democracy to the Middle East?

NOW, it turns out, we're at war in Iraq because that's where all the terrorists are, and of course we have to fight the terrorists. Well yes, there are terrorists there. And yes, those terrorists are there to kill Americans. Is it not blindingly obvious that the terrorists are in Iraq ONLY because we are there first? I mean, can anyone seriously doubt that we are the cause of the terrorists in Iraq right now?

Thirty years ago, we cut and we ran out of Vietnam. Thank God we did. It was a war that could not be won. However, we were in Vietnam for 15 years before that. I hope we don't wait thirteen more years to get out of Iraq.....

Is President Bush actually Woodrow Wilson? For some reason I've been reading a bunch of books about the time between 1910 and 1920, and I think the comparison is apt.

Both are utterly convinced that God is on their side, believers that America is somehow unique in the world and that it is America's role to lead the world into a new tomorrow.

Wilson's proudest creation, the League of Nations, failed. I suppose the analogy with Bush would be his war in Iraq. I'm betting it's going to fail too. It's sure not going well so far. Another helicopter shot down today.... Ugh.

I'm reading a fascinating book about the peace conference at the end of World War One called Paris 1919. For a few months, the victors were in Paris: US, UK, France, Italy (until they left in a snit), Japan (when they were listened to), and other little ones. They also had delegations from everyone. Serbs, Zionists, Prince Faisal. Even Ho Chi Minh, who happened to be living in Paris, tried to bring their attention to Vietnam (he was ignored). They had a lot to do, and it's amazing how many things that crossed their collective desks were decided incorrectly. Most conflicts of the last 85 years have their origins at this conference.

World War Two (Europe)--the peace terms imposed on Germany were too harsh

World War Two (Asia)--they managed to turn BOTH China and Japan away from being liberal democracies, so China moved to the left, Japan moved to the right, and their territorial differences were not solved at all

Greece-Turkey (1920s)-Yep.

Balkans (1980s, 1990s)-Yugoslavia came into being on its own in 1918 but was endorsed here; even in 1919 the Serbs were arrogent, overbearing jerks

Middle East (1920s-present)--they invented the following countries: Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel (effectively), Lebanon. One could argue they did a poor job with every single one of them. They tried to control Egypt and Saudi Arabia also, but events on the ground moved too fast for them. As bad as they screwed up Europe and Asia, this may be their most lasting mistake. After all, most of Yugoslavia is peaceful these days (and plotting to take over the NBA), and that's the only mistake left in Europe. They can't be blamed for ongoing unrest in Asia. But the entire shape of the Middle East was created at this conference (except for Iran, which wasn't their fault). And they did a poor, poor job of it. Iraq, for example, should not exist. It should be three countries. And yet it might still.

That's another interesting feature of what happened. Many of their mistakes were unmade later, but at the cost of millions of lives. Except Czechoslovakia, which was invented here but had the good sense to split peacefully.

All this aside, did they do a bad job? That's sort of another way of asking if anyone else could have done any better. They had a lot of problems. To take perhaps the most obvious example, no one had any idea what was going on in Russia because it was, inconveniently, in the midst of the Bolshevik Revolution. So they were trying to do things like draw boundaries for Poland and Turkey without Russia's input and without knowing whether any government in Russia even existed.

If, like me, you believe that to understand the present one must understand the past, this book is essential reading. I've learned an amazing amount from it and I highly recommend it.

I wonder when the first prominent member of Congress will get up and say that it's time to bring the troops home from Iraq. In Vietnam, we were there in force maybe 14 years. The Soviet Union was about 12 in Afghanistan. Are we still going to be in Iraq in 2016?
I disagreed with decision to go to war, but once we went in we clearly couldn't leave right away. These days, however, it's obvious it's going poorly, but how long do we wait until we give up? How many lives is our pride worth? At this point, I'm prepared to pull out after their election. Which may (or may not) happen at the end of January.
We shouldn't be there, and we especially shouldn't participate in an Iraqi civil war.

Iraq is, of course, a disaster.

But now consider the government's fiscal policies. Look at how the national debt has mushroomed over the last four years. This is not good for our future.

The administration's 'justification' for the war in Iraq (which, though unspecified, lingered murkily in the penumbra between weapons of mass destruction and a connection between Saddam and Al Quaeda) has of course been conclusively proven false. But that doesn't stop many people from believing it, and it doesn't stop Dick Cheney from bringing it up, even though he knows it's a lie.


Strikes me that this isn't the first time we've done this. I see similarities to the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. LBJ claimed that US ships had been attacked by the North Vietnamese. Congress believed him and passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was the legal justification for the war.
The problem was that there was no attack. US ships were shooting at nothing and then observing the explosions caused by their shots. The evidence was ambiguous then, but the administration kept insisting that the attack happened. Old myths die hard--in his generally fabulous book, MacNamara insists that the evidence was ambiguous, even though it wasn't then and isn't now.

Iraq is a roughly similar situation. In both cases, the administration took some ambiguous (at best) evidence and kept insisting it was true, parlaying it into congressional support. Even afterward, people still believe the lie. So far, we've avoided huge casualties in Iraq, but we were in Vietnam for eleven years after that resolution. Do we want to be in Iraq until 2013? I sure hope not.