Each day we keep our troops in Iraq costs the American taxpayers a billion dollars. A billion dollars a day: that's the cost of war. And for what? What are we accomplishing there? Nothing. Less than nothing because each day we're there, there's more death and destruction not only of our own troops but of innocent Iraqi men, women and children. And it's all blood on our hands as long as we maintain a presence there. All the Iraqis killing other Iraqis, all the sectarion violence - it's all blood on our hands. If we pull out, #1) we save a billion dollars a day and #2) any killing from then on is not blood on our hands.
You say the billion dollars a day isn't really costing the American taxpayers a cent? The Bushies are actually lowering taxes. Well, where's the money coming from then? It's not being picked off of trees. Actually it's being borrowed, and that's even worse than if taxes were raised to pay for this ridiculous military adventure perpetrated by a bunch of neocon ignoramuses who never saw a day of combat themselves. Did Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or Rice ever see a day of combat? Heck, no. The money is being borrowed at the rate of a billion dollars a day from Chinese central bankers, believe it or not. The American consumer culture is being propped up by China and also Japan, Saudi Arabia and a few others who have excess dollars to loan out because we're running a $700 billion a year trade deficit with those countries, and all countries have to purchase oil from OPEC in dollars. Therefore, it has been easy (up to the present at least) to simply borrow all the money they want, let Americans consume all they want, not raise taxes and fight wars all at the same time. The American government has a limitless credit card or do they?
Some day the Chinese and others will start calling in their chits. Some countries will start placing their bets in euros or yen and the almighty dollar won't be so almighty any more. The OPEC cartel might not be able to (or might not want to) continue to enforce payment for oil in dollars. By the way that's why the Bushies and the Saudis are so much in bed with one another. Because the US is sunk if OPEC (controlled by the Saudis) ever starts accepting euros and/or yen as payment instead of or in addition to dollars. But basically, the Bush Administration is mortgaging the future of the American people to Chinese central bankers in return for letting them pursue their pet project: war. Not to mention they're mortgaging American prestige in the court of world opinion. Before they're done you will hear the sound of American prosperity and prestige circling the drain. But the Bushies will be safely out of office before it actually hits the drain leaving the next administration to deal with the detritus. They're the ones (probably Democrats) who will be positioned to actually take the blame.
These ridiculous politicians both Democrat and Republican say we can't leave Iraq because we haven't got it right yet. We have to stay there till we get it right. Did we ever get it right in Viet Nam? No, but it was the same rationale that they used there. There has to be more bloodshed. More money has to be spent till we get it right. They never got it right, and finally just left ignominiously several years after the whole thing was a lost cause. They're just stupid, that's all. If they did a cost benefit analysis, they would see that it's all costs and no benefits. What benefit is the American taxpayer going to get out of the Iraq war? Why don't they just come out and tell us? Is it oil? Is it that Sadam's gone? Hah! And that's worth half a trillion dollars to achieve that. Sadam was a check on Iran. Now that he's gone, Iraq will effectively become part of Greater Iran. Nice going Bushies. What an achievement that is! The truth is that the removal of Sadam was not in American interests even if he was a bad guy. If you count up all the deaths he was justifiably accountable for and all the deaths the US is justifiably accountable for in Iraq, I think it would be a wash. Sadam had blood on his hands and so does the US. However, Sadam's Iraq was a check on Iran. Now that the Shiites are in control (they're a majority and the majority rules in a democracy, remember), Iraq is aligned with Iran which is a Shiite nation.
All this stuff about bringing democracy to the Middle East is a bunch of bunk. They don't want our democracy, and to the extent they have it, they vote in politicians and parties inimical to American interests. So what kind of fools want to bring democracy to the Middle East at the cost of American lives and the mortgaging of our future?
The truth is that human lives and American treasure is being sacrificed on the altar of Presidential vanity. The Iraq war is the biggest folly since World War I. Bigger folly even than the Viet Nam war. I said before it started that the US would be kicking a hornet's nest, opening a can of worms and sticking itself to a tar baby. It's all turned out to be true. The tar baby, by the way, is "we have to stay there till we get it right." But Bush, Cheney , Rumsfield et al will never get on the TV and admit to the American people and the people of the world that they were wrong. They'd sooner nuke the entire world into oblivion than admit they were wrong. This whole thing is an exercise in preserving the egotism and vanity of everyone involved in promoting it: the neocons like Richard Perle, William Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, BCR (Bush, Cheny, Rumsfeld) and the rest. They'll never admit they were wrong, that they lied us into this war, that they're the biggest hypocrites and liars in the history of the world and they they and their cronies stand to profit from it.
They've trumped up and manufactured the whole War on Terrorism. Fifteen guys from Saudi Arabia and 4 others perpetrated 9/11. And what did the Bush Administration do? First of all, George Bush the father, according to some reports watched the whole thing on TV with Safiq bin Laden, Osama's brother, at a meeting of the Carlyle group, another group of guys set up with the explicit purpose of profiting from war. And then they take the bin Laden clan and load them on a plane and send them out of the US with their blessings. They were "processed out." Sure, believe that and they'll tell you another one. Wouldn't you think they would hold onto them until they'd gotten all the information about Osama they could, even if it took a few days? The reason is that the Bush family is in bed with the Saudis and the bin Laden family (who are Saudis, of course). The finances and fortunes of the Saudi oligarchs and the Bush family have greased each other for many years, and oil has been the lubricant of choice. More than $1.4 billion in investments and contracts have gone from the House of Saud over the past 20 years to companies in which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent positions -- Harken Energy, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Group among them. Invade Saudi Arabia? Never.
First of all they never should have coined the term "War on Terror." It's just something they can sell to the simple-minded American public just like they coined the term and then sold "The Cold War." To think that 19 college students could start a World War which is what the Bushies are trying to turn the War on Terrorism into. It's ridiculous. What should have been done is to never have made such a big thing out of it in the first place, never have made it such a big political issue, but then the Bush Administration would have had nothing else to talk about. Instead government should have defended the country by strengthenenig the borders and ports so no illegal persons or contraband can enter the country, strengthened security around nuclear and chemical plants and then used intelligence operations and special forces to locate and destroy al Quaeda and bin Laden as well as any other people engaged in this kind of activity in as surgical a manner as possible, sparing as many civilian lives as possible. Any loss of civilian life should be viewed as a relative failure. Instead they invaded a soveriegn nation and started a war in which (like all modern wars) 9 out of 10 casualties are civilian, at least 3 of them children.
The net result in this neocon exercise in futility and military adventurism called the Iraq War will be that the US will lose its preeminent position in the world. Already the largest debtor nation, the US consumer culture will eventually no longer be propped up by communist Chinese central bankers (although no one seriously believes they're really communists any more because they are out-capitalizing the capitalists). Therefore, the consumer culture will collapse; American prestige will reach a nadir. Jobs will already have been off-shored, and the US will be left in the dust as a has been by the other nations of the world mainly located in Asia and Europe who haven't squandered their fortunes on needless militarism but instead have invested in their people and infrastructure. It really didn't have to be this way had the American people and government decided on a different course. Is it too late to change this course? Maybe. However, the Bush Administration is dead set on staying it for the next 2+ years.
