The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (book review)

Those who say “it is the economy” and “not the war” forget that the war has had a negative impact on the economy. When the US went to war in Iraq in March of 2003, the American people were told it was going to cost $50 billion. Just recently, the Bush administration has asked for a defense budget of 515.4 billion, a 7.5 increase, while calling for major cuts (200 billion) from Medicare and Medicaid programs. This is in addition to a request for an additional supplemental 70 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The next American President will inherit a deficit of 400 billion dollars.While President Bush says the war has not hurt the US economy, and he has never lied to us before, a new book puts a “conservative estimate” of the war’s cost at $3 trillion. It could easily be as high as five trillion.

Nobel laureate and former chief World Bank economist, Joseph Stiglitz, and co-author Linda Bilmes of Harvard University, argue in The Three Trillion Dollar War that the Bush administration has mislead the American people by repeatedly underestimating the long term costs of the war. Currently, it’s costing $25 billion a month. Two more years of staying in Iraq will cost another $600 billion. Three more years and it’s close to a trillion dollars more.

Stiglitz and Bilmes argue that the Iraq War has become the second-most expensive war in US history, after World War II. They argue that costs of the war outlined in the budget are not the full cost because there are other costs hidden elsewhere in the defense budget.

The White House has responded negatively to the book. White House spokesperson Tony Fratto stated, “People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can’t even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11.” This is a strange comment when you realize that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11!

According to the authors, the most important budgetary costs are the long-term costs of taking care of veterans-their disability and veterans’ healthcare benefits. This cost will total hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few decades. This war has had a huge number of injuries. Of the 1.6 million who have fought, an estimated 39 percent will wind up with some form of disability. The longer the war lasts the greater the number of injuries and greater costs of disability benefits into the future. The official DOD website, gives a number around 30,000 wounded, but that is only the wounded in combat. There are also non-combat injuries that double the DOD figure which are also costly. The number of American fatalities reached 4,000 by Easter Sunday 2008. Their families must also be compensated. It is impossible to imagine what Mc Cain’s “hundred year war” would cost!

The war has also been associated with an increasing price of oil. We’re spending money on oil exports from Saudi Arabia and other oil-exporting countries. Since the beginning of the war, the price of oil has skyrocketed from about $25 a barrel to $100 a barrel since the war began. This has had a ramifying effect on the economy.

The authors note that the Iraq war has been the most expensive war since World War II. In this war, the US spent three times per Iraqi than what was spent per European in the Marshall Plan. The very high casualty rate in Iraq has exponentially boosted the costs. In World War II, Vietnam, and Korea, the number of wounded troops per fatality was about two-to-one or three-to-one. Today the number of wounded troops per fatality is seven-to-one in combat. If you include all of those wounded in non-combat and those sick with disease that had to be medevaced home, it’s fifteen-to-one. Higher casualties mean that the United States has a long-term cost of taking care of thousands of disabled veterans for the rest of their lives.

The authors also note that the cost of the private contractors such as those that work for Blackwater are expensive compared to what the government pays per year for American soldiers. Security contractors cost as much as $400,000 a year, compared to soldiers costing the government $40,000. The privatization of so much of the actual war and occupation also contributes to the explosive inflation of costs.

The authors claim that this the first time the US went into war by cutting rather than raising taxes. The war has been financed by deficit spending. The Bush administration has fooled people into thinking that they could wage a war for free. Since 40% percent of the financing has come from abroad, it means that Americans will be paying interest on the borrowed money for years to come.

The Bush administration has successfully transferred hundreds of billions of dollars from American consumers and businesses to the oil exporters. The two big winners in this war are the oil companies and the defense contractors. The losers are the American and Iraqi people. The money spent on the war is money that’s not being spent here at home on the American infrastructure and for the benefit of the American people.

The Historic Importance of the 2008 Presidential Elections

There are some who say that American Presidential elections are not that important, that we progressives should not spend too much of our precious time on them. Nevertheless, Presidential elections are important because they are a part of the civic process of political legitimation and validation in America’s mass-mediated democratic society. American voters get to decide which political party controls the State, and which party forms an administration that defines domestic and foreign policy.

In the United States, Presidential elections are particularly important because they involve mobilized bureaucratic political machines, the large corporations, and tens of millions of millions of Americans who vote and get involved in doing the daily work of the political parties. Because so many people perceive and act as though elections are important, they become important and real in their consequences.

In the US, the two large bureaucratic political party machines, the Democratic and Republican Parties, administer, organize, and take responsibility for the lengthy and costly voting and election process. Here the ultimate prize is political power for the next US President, its administration, and the Party that got them into power. Political organizers and strategists in both parties are paid big bucks to get results.

The powerful corporations certainly consider elections very important and spend millions to make sure that their economic interests and power are represented by both parties. The Pentagonians and the Generals also get their say on the television, making sure that whoever wins understands the need for an ever expanding defense budget to fight the “war on terror” indefinitely into the future. It will be difficult for either candidate to change very much of this. The empire must be defended.

The recent rhetorical war of words between the Obama and Clinton campaigns and their supporters are now constantly flooding the airways and streaming through our radios, newspapers, internet servers, and the mainstream media.

Like John Kerry in 2004, Hillary Clinton has pushed national security issues to the foreground suggesting that Obama is not ready to be commander in chief like she and McCain are. She says she will be “ready to act on day one,” like she was when she supported Bush and voted for the use of force in Iraq.

Obama, at least, has stated he would want more emphasis on diplomacy and a more cautious and multilateral use of American military power. He continues to criticize the “disastrous” decision to launch the Iraq war, and has begun to raise an issue of concern to progressives “the possible alternative domestic problems that could be addressed with the trillions of dollars going to Iraq. While Obama’s campaign has received support from many progressive Democrats like Tom Haden and media critic Robert Solomon who want an end to the war, he also has also received substantial support and money from elements in the ruling class and the corporate establishment who may believe that the current disastrous trajectory of the country threatens even their interests.

Why the 2008 Elections Are Historic

The 2008 American Presidential elections are already historic, and scholars and journalists will be writing dissertations and books on it for years. A Democratic Party victory of either Presidential candidate, Barrack Obama or Hillary Clinton, would be a significant historic event. Furthermore, a landslide repudiation of Bush’s war policies (and the consequent economic downturn partially generated by the dramatic increase in the price of oil), and a good electoral trouncing of John Mc Cain, would also be historically significant. It would restore hope in a war weary and divided world that wants signs of a visible change and greater rationality in American policies.

An Obama victory could undoubtedly heal some of the sensitive racial wounds that have been an undeniable ugly part of American history, although some skeptics still warn that an Obama Presidency could re-inflame them. Hillary Clinton^‘s victory would also be historic because we would have our first female President, proof that we have come a long way from the times when women could not even vote.

Both candidates have received a tremendous amount of support from the American people. Yet, the “identity politics” of race and gender that have so far played a role will likely be trumped by the bigger issues such as the economy and the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A joint ticket is near an impossibility given the mudslinging and personal attacks of the past week, most of it initiated by Clinton who is now demanding a costly revote in Michigan and Florida. Now many media commentators and political pundits are questioning whether there can even be a peaceful reconciliation within the Democratic Party. A bitter struggle to the end decided by the super delegates at the convention could be a disaster. and might just be enough to accomplish the impossible - another Republican victory in November by a pro war John McCain.

Let’s face it. Within the two party system, politics involves a cynical and often times ruthless struggle for power. The power to choose the next Supreme Court justices, the power to decide when and where to deploy American forces, and ultimately the power to decide when military force will be used against others is at stake. It also means the power to frame public perceptions, to alter the tax structure, to define the scope of civil liberties and human rights, and to develop specific policies regarding domestic environmental and social problems.

Third Party Candidates

Based on the historical and documentary record, we can conclude that the two political party machines do everything in their power to maintain a monopoly of legitimacy and prevent Third Party candidates from getting a serious hearing. Gaining control of the state apparatus is essential to both political machines. To do this they must monopolize political discourse and silence outsiders. This is why there has never been a successful third party candidacy for President in American history. The established social structure, the power of corporations and the mainstream media, as well as the cultural political traditions in America, are aggressively mobilized against it.

Instead, third party candidacies are invariably made into a scapegoat by the losing party. The strong historical pattern is for defeated parties to project their faults and failures onto the back of the “goat” as it is sent off into the wilderness. This is essentially what has happened to Ralph Nader since the controversial 2000 elections where the Supreme Court intervened to stop a Florida recount.

The organizational prospects of a powerful social movement for change propelling a successful third party candidate are currently weak, if not non-existent, in spite of the polls which show a majority of Americans opposed to the war. While many have raised a big stink about another Nader candidacy, it is unlikely that Nader will have any impact on the final results of the 2008 elections. All a third party candidate like Nader can hope to do at this point is gain enough legitimacy and recognition to raise public issues that are considered two controversial by the two political machines. Nader’s celebrity status will allow some of this to happen, but it is unlikely to have any substantial effect on the final election results in spite of the scary scenarios drummed up by revived Nader critics.

The American Legitimacy Crisis

Trotsky once said that “every state is founded on force.” The sociologist Max Weber agreed. However, Weber added another complicating factor, the issue of “legitimacy.” He defined the state as an institution that “monopolizes the legitimate use of violence within a given territory.” By extension, an imperial state like the United States tries to monopolize the legitimate use of violence internationally, blessing all of its military actions with the impeccable label of defense.

Voting is a powerful means of providing legitimacy for the state on the domestic front. This explains why a small number of progressives and idealists, despairing of the prospect for change within the electoral political game defined by the ruling class and its two political parties, opt out and refuse to vote or insist on voting outside of the two party duopoly.

The next American President will face an unprecedented international “legitimacy crisis” around the world regarding the “war on terror,” a possible serious economic recession and financial crisis, and the growing military burden and economic costs of the two endless counter insurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Additionally, the next President will face the continued political instability and violence caused by the iron fisted Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands and the possible collapse of peace talks. Furthermore, they will continue to face more resistance, rebellion, and change in their backyard in Central and South America. Finally, they will be faced with an environmental crisis of runaway global warming that could dwarf anything we have seen in the past.

It is a hopeful sign that most Americans say they want to see change away from the current Bush policies of torture, occupation, and war. Some of this hope is providing a higher turnout in the Democratic primaries around the country. The next election will reveal just how deep that desire for change really is. One thing is certain. We are entering a period of troubled times for the overstretched American Empire and its exhausted military. It is time to bring the troops home and seek genuine multilateral and international solutions to numerous difficult political conflicts.

Obama and Clinton Go Down to The Wire

Obama and Clinton are going down to the wire. Next Tuesday’s contests in Ohio and Texas could decide who is the Democratic nominee. If Clinton wins in Texas and Ohio, or even one of the two important states, it is likely she will stay in the race longer. The longer she stays, the more shrill she becomes, the greater the chance of a damaging split in the Democratic Party. Already, the Clinton campaign is providing arguments against Obama that will be used gainfully by the Republicans. The notion that we will all be safer if it is Hillary that picks up the phone in the White House would be humorous if it weren’t so ludicrous.

Apparently, the Republicans have already decided that it is Obama that is a greater threat to their ideologically defined pet project in Iraq. So in the last few days we have heard President Bush and McCain and the right wing hysterics at Fox News take on Obama as if he were named “Hussein Al-Qaeda.” And to his credit Obama fired back arguing that there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq until the US launched its ill fated and devastating invasion, an invasion and occupation that has killed hundreds of thousands and created 2 million refugees and 2 million displaced people inside Iraq.

Obama correctly pointed out that the destruction of Iraq has generated more terrorism and more fear and anger towards the US around the world, and that we squandered the good will of the international community that was present at the time of 9/11. Furthermore, Obama has made it clear that he would talk to people like Chavez and Castro and push diplomatic efforts with other perceived enemies of the United States, whereas Clinton has replicated the irrational Bush policy of demanding results first before talking to people. It was once assumed that you talk with people hoping to alter their behavior, whereas now it is assumed that you threaten people with military violence to alter their behavior. So in this regard, Clinton and the Republicans are not much different than the so called “terrorists.”

My guess is that Obama will end up the Democratic nominee. It won’t be a difficult choice for me if it is Obama vs. Mc Cain. Mc Cain is a candidate who has never seen a war he didn’t want to expand. There is no doubt that a McCain Presidency will be more hawkish and more militaristic, although Obama leaves a lot to be desired with his stand on Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he argues that the US should build up its military forces in Afghanistan and possibly launch attacks into Pakistan at suspected Al Qaeda areas without prior approval of the Pakistani government. Here Obama and Clinton are not much different than Bush. The notion that additional bombing (this is what happens when we launch “air strikes”) campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan will increase American security is simply ludicrous.

Neither the Democrats or the Republicans display any critical or historical intelligence whatsoever on the Israeli -Palestinian conflict. Both Obama and Clinton were disappointing when they stumbled over themselves in the recent Michigan debate claiming the sacrosanct nature of the “special relationship” with Israel. This special relationship has endlessly rewarded Israel’s ethnic cleansing and expanding settlement of Palestinian lands backed by American weapons and financial support. This uncritical support is what has allowed Israel to act with impunity for years in the Middle East launching numerous invasions of Lebanon and aggressive assaults on the Palestinians. Just look at the kill ratios in this conflict and you can see what is actually going on..Obama and Clinton essentially sanctioned the anticipated Israel military invasion of the Gaza prison they have created. Democrats and the American people better wake up regarding their unquestioning support for Israel’s militaristic expansionist policies, a support that has guaranteed 30 billion dollars of American taxpayer money over the next ten years.

Ralph Nader has entered the Presidential contest at the last minute creating a lot of blustery anger from Democrats who incorrectly blame him on what was clearly a stolen election in 2000. Once again pop psychologists everywhere are claiming Nader is just an “egomaniac,” that he just wants to be in the spotlight. This notion that it is just ego ignores Nader’s history as a public intellectual and gadfly, and is a convenient way of discrediting him and unfortunately the legitimate issues he has raised. Yes, Nader has a strong ego, but I don’t believe that explains why he is running. Also, are we to believe that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are less egotistical, that they have weak egos?

In an interview on CNN, Nader made it clear that he wanted to broaden the debate and press the substantive issues of corporate control of America, the failure of US Middle East policy, particularly with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and address serious environmental problems plaguing America. He added that nothing should stop the Democrats from winning by a landslide, suggesting that if they fail they should hang it up. Nader just picked 42 year old Matt Gonzalez of San Francisco as his running mate. The San Francisco Chronicle red-baited Gonzales in an editorial claiming that Nader “picked a brooding far left running mate who couldn’t get elected mayor of San Francisco.” Yet, Matt Gonzales scared the Democratic Party establishment in the Bay Area by winning 47% of the vote in the 2003 mayor’s race against Gavin Newsome.

In reality, Nader should not be seen as a threat to the Democratic Party since he has little organization behind him and has entered the race at a very late stage. So I will accept him at face value that he is hoping to widen the debate via media coverage. I am not very hopeful that he will succeed since he will most likely be stifled and silenced by the Democrats and the mainstream media. In fact, I would question whether we are a true democracy if third party candidates are to be forever labeled “spoilers” of the two party monopoly of political power in America. We have already see where that has gotten us - a highly militarized and corporatized fortress America bent on world domination at the expense of the long run interests and safety of the American people.

In spite of my above criticisms of the Democrats, I am sticking with my recommendation that progressives go with Obama as the best real hope for reformist change in America. He has stimulated hope for change in Americans with grass roots organizational connections to the labor movement, environmental organizations, and what is left of the Civil Rights movement. And hope is something we have been sorely lacking in America for years. We can only speculate on whether his constituencies will hold him to his promises.

Let’s hope that they are not false hopes.

The 2008 Elections and The Peace Movement

Recent surveys show that American voters have a critical view of how things are going in the country, and that they are confident that the next American President will have the power to change much of what is wrong. Voters begin this election year with a grim assessment of the status quo. Roughly three-fourths say the country is on “the wrong track.” Some say the Democrats don’t have the spine to improve things. In my view, progressives have to push the Democrats to end the war, restore our civil liberties, particularly the right of “habeas corpus,” and to protect our environment.

In short, even if the Democrats win, the progressive peace movement needs to continue to “bear witness” to the crimes that our government, the CIA, and the Pentagonians are committing in foreign lands against people that have never harmed or attacked America. We must continue to protest, to act outside the electoral process, to stand up for our rights, speak our conscience, defend human rights, even if our so called “leaders” can’t.

Yet, I agree with those progressives who argue the need to strategically vote “democratic” in the elections - just to get some room to maneuver. The American unions, and most civil rights and environmental groups, consider it imperative to get the Democrats elected and in the White House, and they are certainly a part of progressive America. They may be right, given the lack of any genuine practical alternatives.

We need to vote for the Democratic nominee and get the neo-cons and the Republicans out of the White House. I know, I know - we have all heard this sorry story before, we have all been betrayed before, and the historical record of the party over the last few decades makes us nauseous.

Yet, I will still compromise and vote Democratic just because I fear what another Republican victory would do for the Supreme Court, and frankly, for the American people and the world. There is some evidence of division and stirrings of rebellion at the elite levels of the American ruling class, including among the intelligence agencies and the military, regarding the course being followed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the future course to be pursued with regard to Iran.

A Critical Historical Juncture For Americans

Tom Hayden, in THE NATION, writes that progressives and peace movement should vote Democratic in the next Presidential election to stop the further consolidation of power on the Right. I agree for many of the reasons cited below. I know that some will call me a “sell out” for compromising with the two party “duopoley” and for voting Democrat rather than voting for a Green candidate or a Peace and Freedom Party Candidate. In my view, we are at a critical historical juncture in American history. We cannot let the country move further to the political Right, or allow the Republican Party to remain in power. The pendulum needs to swing the other way just enough to give progressives more air to breath, more hope, and more freedom to speak.

Frankly, what has already occurred is historic, something I never thought I would see in my lifetime - that we have a woman and a black man of mixed decent as the two leading contenders for the Democratic Party Presidential nominations. All the other candidates have dropped out! More amazing is the pronounced support for Barack Obama among the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, represented by the recent rousing endorsements by John Kerry and Teddy Kennedy. Who would have, could have, predicted this?

Both Democratic candidates are intelligent and qualified to be President. Hillary Clinton has stirred the hopes of millions of women who would love to see a strong and intelligent female President sitting in the White House. Her victory would be historic. Barack Obama has charisma, and has attracted large numbers young and black people, while showing us that he can attract white voters and female voters as well. His message of hope and change seems to have tapped into the boiling well of frustration disturbing the American people. It is still an open question whether this type of frustration will translate into a Democratic victory against the pro-war John McCain, who will most likely be the Republican candidate in spite of Rush Limbo’s blustery squeals and protestations..

The tide of the “conservative revolution” that placed a clique of neo-con ideologues and warmongers in the White House has ebbed significantly as a result of a failing economy exacerbated by the costly debacle in Iraq. The Republican Party is facing a serious credibility crisis, and the polls and surveys show very low ratings for Bush and Cheney. I have personally talked with Republicans who are so disgusted with the Bush administration that they will vote Democratic in the next election. Independents are also leaning heavily on the Democratic side of the ledger.

Of course, anything can happen between now and next Fall, and none of us has a crystal ball. . Another terrorist attack could place the ball right back in the Republicans hands, although a terror attack in Spain had the opposite effect. We have no guarantee that the Democratic candidate would win.

What The Democrats Would Likely Do

Yet, the Democrats could potentially control both the Congress and the White House. If they win the elections by a big enough margin, they could begin to undo some of the damages that the Bush administration imposed on the American people. Of course the Republicans would squawk and resist and try to mobilize opposition. And it wouldn’t be easy -the Democrats would inherit a jittery economy on the verge of recession and an America suffering from a serious housing and financial crisis and two counter-insurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, they have some responsibility for both wars.

What else are the Democrats likely to do? They would raise taxes to provide more support to poor and desperate Americans. They could pass legislation in support of universal child health care, a first step toward universal health care, and pay for it through an increased progressive tax base that takes a greater amount of money from the rich. They would likely create a more favorable balance in the Supreme Court through the appointment process. They would protect Roe vs. Wade. They would restore “habeas corpus” rights and other civil liberties that were removed by Bush. These are not insignificant possibilities.

The Democrats certainly would be more supportive of the unions and the right of American workers to make a living wage. This is why most unions are saying it is essential that the Democrats win. They would be somewhat better on the environment and would most likely join the rest of the world in fighting global warming. Finally, there would be much pressure on them from the American people to end the war in Iraq, although here they will face resistance from the Republican Party, establishment bureaucracies like the Pentagon and the CIA, as well as the privately organized Right.

The Critics View: “Repugs and Dimocrats!”

However, I understand the resistance of those cynics who say “no,” who refuse to compromise and vote Democrat, or even participate in the electoral system. The wars go on and on, and a shameless bipartisan Congress keeps funding them. Little wonder, they say, that the American people have so little respect for Congress today.

The critics also say the Democrats have failed us in as much as they have refused to use the tools (like impeachment) available to them to prevent this country from degenerating into a hyper-militaristic and paranoid “fortress America” with fewer civil liberties. I would agree that the trend of reaction and regression has been very strong. Yet, we cannot afford to fail to reverse the reactionary trend, and we must do what we can to change this country for the better. And at this juncture in history, that means to vote Democratic.

Recently, I saw a cartoon poking fun at “the Repugs and Dimocrats.” I laughed. Nader is at least partly right when he claims the two party system is corrupt and compromised by money from the corporate establishment. Journals like COUNTERPUNCH, and many on the Left, believe that both parties are war parties, and that neither is capable of defending the Constitution or the genuine long term interests of the American people. In fact, COUNTERPUNCH argues that there is not “a dimes worth of difference” between them. I disagree , for the reasons cited above.

“Vote Democrat,” the critics mock, “that’s the same old recycled BS that we on the left are sold every Presidential election year.” Then we are invariably betrayed. And the wars go on and on, the environment disintegrates, and the gap between rich and poor grows exponentially.

In spite of my decision the vote Democratic, I would agree up to a point with those who maintain that the current two party system has increasingly been dysfunctional. Both parties have responsibility for the imperial overstretch that currently characterizes the American Empire. It may even be true is that the American political system as it is structurally organized cannot adequately address the serious problems we face, and needs serious transformation before the government becomes “a failed state.” We have a legitimacy crisis which is also a political crisis in America, and the possibility of two stolen elections testify to that.

With the critics, I agree that Ralph Nader did NOT cost the Democrats the election in 2000, a line promoted by the Democratic Party to absolve itself of responsibility. The election campaign in 2004 was poorly run, actually emphasizing John Kerry’s military service in Vietnam, a strategy that obviously backfired. Bush was selected by the Supreme Court and has been sitting in the white house ever since.

Many in the Democratic party also went along timidly with the rigged election, supported the invasion of Afghanistan, voted for the use of force in Iraq, voted for the “Patriot Act,” and voted over and over again to fund the war of aggression in Iraq, and refused to impeach Bush, etc., etc, And it is true that during the past decade the Democrats have been stumbling over themselves to show us that they worship the military as much as the Republicans. In fact, their behavior during the last decade has been abominable, and they have increasingly acted like Republicans embracing the deep structure of militarism and imperialism that is so dominant in our society and culture.

Like the critics, I am truly sick of it! Sick of the endless wars, the endless sell outs, the surrendering of our civil liberties, and the endless privatization of health care, education, and even warfare. So I don’t wonder why people are skeptical and cynical, or why Congress has such a low approval rating. Still, it is important that we thoroughly repudiate the Republicans in a landslide.

While I recommend that people vote for the Democratic nominee, I know that inevitably progressives and peace activists will once again be disappointed. Some will be further radicalized if there is no real change. We must stay active and hope that we can build a social movement that can change America. Right now, however, we desperately need air and room to breathe.