The War as Investment
- From: ayaz <ayaz_siddiqi@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:00:00 -0700
On Oct 18, 4:28 am, "Zvakanaka" <lalapa...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Seeing the Depths of Hell in a Hungry Child's Eyes
huffingtonpost.com
Michealene Cristini Risley
Posted October 16, 2007 | 11:38 AM (EST)
<snip crap posted by the enemy of zimbabwe>
here is what your friends at huffingtonpost.com sound like when you
turn your back...
The War as Investment
huffingtonpost.com
Edward Hulmes
Posted October 17, 2007 | 04:28 PM (EST)
Imagine you picked up the newspaper one morning and read that the
supposedly unbeatable investment fund safeguarding your retirement
savings was a pyramid scheme, that the fund managers' preening
assurances of low risk were lies, that their investment strategies
were colossally flawed, and that your money was gone with nothing to
show for it. What would you do? Would you do as the fund managers
suggest and send them yet more money, perhaps your child's college
savings, hoping for a miracle before the grand jury convened? Or would
you run for the exit as fast as you could, salvaging whatever pennies
remained?
Not really much of a decision, is it? No one in their right mind would
continue investing in a red-ink scheme marred by hubris, error and
fraud, would they?
Of course not... Unless that investment is called Iraq, where good
money follows bad no matter how dismal the prospectus.
In a sane world, at least some of our national leaders and pundits
would see to it that this massive, speculative and risky investment we
call the Iraq War received at least the same cost-benefit analysis
we'd give a new mutual fund or a stock tip or an email from the son of
the late Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko offering astonishing
returns on a few simple bank transfers. You'd think someone in power
might suggest we take a hard-nosed, fiscally conservative look at the
costs and benefits of investing further, as well as consider
alternative, potentially more profitable investments for our tax
dollars. You'd think that would be a no-brainer, given just how
colossally wrong the war supporters have been about everything from
Saddam's non-existent nukes to the flower showers that were supposed
to greet our troops, but you'd be wrong: This essential, commonsense
analysis is entirely and bizarrely missing from our national discourse
about the war, as it has been from the very start.
What we have instead is a lot of posturing about patriotism, democracy
agendas, how "they" hate us for our freedoms, denouncement of
MoveOn.org's freedom to criticize a general whose name rhymes with
"betray us," and the need to give meaning to the lives already
sacrificed by... sacrificing more lives. Such expressions of
sentimentality, partisanship, ego and ignorance masquerade as
analysis, but serve only to obscure the real bottom line questions
that our Congress, president and media elite studiously avoid, namely:
Are we receiving a sufficient return on our Iraq investment? And if
not, why are we still cutting checks?
And just to be sure we know what we're talking about here, the
investment to date has exceeded 3,800 American lives, 200,000 Iraqi
lives, and $450 billion (with another $125 billion added for the
companion war in Afghanistan). That investment has brought us no
measurable returns (except for negative ones) in terms of what should
be our bottom line: increased national security, increased energy
security, increased economic security.
If that level of investment with nothing to show for it sounds
staggering, grab onto something quick: We're on target right now,
without any further debate, to double down, and possibly triple down,
that investment. That's right: According to current projections by the
nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (widely ignored in media
reports about the war), dollar costs of the current Iraq and
Afghanistan war plan will rise to somewhere between $1 and $1.4
trillion before the last soldier comes home... ten years from now.
Let's set aside the question of whether the Iraq War can be rightly
compared to a pyramid scheme, because even if the war's conception
were entirely on the up and up (which most non-delusional Americans
now understand it was not), the question still remains: How can this
president, this Congress and this country embark on and continue such
an immense investment with no serious, rational, informed debate over
its costs versus its benefits?
The absurdity of this omission was hit home this past week in two
ways. There was the scathing and unprecedented public assessment from
the former top commander of troops in Iraq, Lt. General Ricardo
Sanchez, who described the current war strategy as a "catastrophic
failure" and the war itself as "a nightmare with no end in sight."
Makes you really want to dump more money into that investment, doesn't
it?
The second absurdity came when President Bush vetoed bipartisan
legislation that would have expanded subsidized health benefits to 4
million uninsured children who are not covered by current government
programs. Bush asserted his veto of a five-year, $25 billion
appropriation for these uninsured kids was an act of fiscal
responsibility. And he even kept a straight face as he simultaneously
demanded yet another $190 billion investment in a war effort now
costing taxpayers $12 billion a month ($400 million a day, $16.7
million an hour, $287,000 a minute).
What Bush was actually saying with his veto pen was that two more
months of improvised explosive devices, flag-draped coffins,
Blackwater scandals, and phony "secure" market scenes staged for flak-
jacketed network anchors are more important than making sure every
child in America has quality health care.
This sort of comparison this is exactly how we should weigh our
investment in war -- as a money pit sucking away resources that we
could be investing in something that might actually make America
better and stronger. And this begs the larger question of what other
alternative investments, costs and benefits we could be choosing but
are not even talking about. A trillion and a half dollars, after all,
isn't exactly chump change.
We are, in fact, spending enough money on this war to do just about
everything this country so desperately needs doing, if Congress had
the gumption to just say no. Consider this alternative investment
portfolio:
* Restore the G.I. Bill. Modern America was built on the back of the
original GI Bill, which provided home ownership and free college
degrees for the Greatest Generation. Current benefits, however, are a
stab in the back to our troops, who are being cheated out of
meaningful educational and mortgage benefits by a paltry law and dirty
tricks -- such as the recent pullout of 2,600 Minnesota National
Guardsman after 729 days in Iraq, exactly one day short of earning
full GI Bill college benefits. A mere $10 billion, equivalent to less
than one month of war, could make sure every veteran who has served
any length of time since the year 2000 could get a free ride to any
college that accepted them, and a direct home loan from Uncle Sam with
no money down once they graduate. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia is
pushing legislation that would vastly improve the GI Bill. Now it's
time to really support the troops.
* Make college affordable again for the rest of us. Tuition costs have
accelerated at a far great pace than either personal income or
inflation, and what was once a virtual middle class entitlement is now
slipping out of reach for many families. About $35 billion (less than
three months in Iraq) in direct additional aid to state universities
and colleges for the sole purpose of tuition reduction would enable
most to reduce the cost of attendance by half or more. Consider it a
sound investment in the future: Every dollar invested by the World War
II-era GI bill in college education for young men and women netted a
$7 return to the economy.
* Fix health care. Under President Clinton, a revamped government-run
health care program became a model of efficiency, cost control,
patient satisfaction and medical excellence that beat the private
sector on every measure. Believe it or not, this medical miracle was
called the VA, which by 1998 had become a model for what single-payer
care could accomplish. Bush's government-can-do-nothing-right crowd
destroyed the evidence with cuts, cronyism and deliberate
underestimates of war casualty numbers -- one of the great untold
scandals of this presidency. But the Clinton VA model proved
affordable health care for all can be achieved in the US. Conversion
costs from our current broken system could easily require a $200
billion upfront investment, but the savings from a VA-style national
HMO that finally reined in out-of-control consumer medical costs- the
single largest cause of personal bankruptcy in America -- would pay
for itself over and over.
* Energy Independence. Convert no less that 50 million homes to solar
power within a decade, our generation's version of Kennedy's ten-year
moon challenge. Creating quasi-public solar panel manufacturing plants
-- treating solar energy as a non-profit -- would jumpstart what is
currently a niche industry. Economies of scale would then cut in half
current solar installation costs of $11,500 per average home (after
tax breaks), and government backed loans and rebates would cover the
rest. Investment Cost: $300 billion, plus another $50 billion for
solar tax incentives for businesses. Investment return: Going solar on
that scale would significantly cut U.S. fossil fuel use, greenhouse
gas emissions and dependence on Middle Eastern oil, not to mention
catapulting the U.S. to the forefront of the growth industry of the
century, sustainable energy.
* Global Warming Smackdown: Create a crash program to put plug-in
electrical cars and hydrogen-powered vehicles (and hydrogen fueling
stations) in a position of market dominance over the next ten years. A
non-profit, quasi-public network of hydrogen fueling stations must be
constructed, making hydrogen vehicles practical for long-haul driving,
while the solar home initiative would free up enough electrical
generation capacity to power up plug-in vehicles for urban transit.
Cost: $200 billion for R&D, $150 billion for hydrogen fueling network
startup. Generous tax incentives for vehicle manufacturers (and
consumers) who toe the green line, and severe tax penalties for those
who continue to guzzle would close the deal. Benefits: say goodbye to
petroleum financed terrorism, predatory multinational energy
conglomerates, catastrophic global warming (if we're not too late),
and place the U.S. auto industry once again at the top of the heap.
So there you have it. For less than the $1 trillion dollars that Iraq
is going to cost us in the future, we could make a huge investment
with returns that would measurably outstrip what we spend: Supporting
our military, educating the next generation, achieving affordable
universal health care, breaking our addiction to Mideast oil,
decisively combating global warming, and making America the world
leader in green energy and transit technology.
Or we could continue paying for the nightmarish pyramid scheme our
current leaders and all but a couple presidential wannabes still
embrace, investing in a war launched at the wrong time for the wrong
reasons against the wrong enemy with the wrong expectations and no
measurable pay-off for that half trillion dollars down the tubes and
the trillion more yet to be spent. Sadly, at least for now, that
check's still in the mail.
Edward Humes is the author of Over Here: How the GI Bill Transformed
the American Dream and Monkey Girl. He is at work on a new book about
environmental philanthropy and activism. More information at www.EdwardHumes.com
.
- References:
- Seeing the Depths of Hell in a Hungry Child's Eyes
- From: Zvakanaka
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