This week President Bush asked Congress for an additional $72 billion to fund combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through September (through September?!?), bringing the total costs of these wars to $500 billion. The war on terror has been a long and difficult struggle against rogue tyrants and radical mullahs, determined to impose their will on others. This fight, therefore, is absolutely necessary and in fact hasd been ongoing for nearly 40 years. But when such conflicts approach the ½ trillion dollar mark, the time has come to re-evaluate our strategy.
The president has warned, on many occasions, that the war against terror is to be a long one, it is one of the few messages he has been consistent in delivering, nonetheless, ½ trillion dollars seems to have bought little in the way of long term security for this nation or stability in Iraq. By contrast nearly a decade in Vietnam only costs 300 billion in today’s dollars. WWII, which required a massive mobilization of men and materials, not to mention a complete reconfiguration of the domestic economy and over 15 million Americans in arms cost $2 trillion, yet that war led to the defeat of a considerably more dangerous and well organized foe in Europe and Asia. The war in Iraq, however, drags on and on. Will Iraq reach the $2 trillion mark?
Why are Americans still shouldering the burden for a fight that belongs to the Iraqis? Why are we relying primarily on conventional strategies to defeat a non-conventional enemy? Where have billions in reconstruction dollars gone? Such questions need to be answered. There is no question that Iraq was a threat and there is no doubt that Saddam and company did possess weapons of mass destruction, but one must question a war strategy that cost $500 billion to implement, with no measurable and discernable results. Yes Iraq has made political and even economic progress, militarily, however, the war is no different than it was in the fall of 2003.
The Bush administration is not exclusively to blame for this turn of events. Indeed, if not for the complicity of the left in this and other countries it is conceivable that the radical insurgents in Iraq would have long been defeated. The insurgents, however, understand the consequence s of their actions, realizing that with every new attack, they feed a growing anti-war movement amongst the American left. The left has and will continue to exploit such events for their own political purposes and in a sense they have grown to rely on the insurgents to implement their political strategy. Such chicanery by the left, does not absolve the Bush administration for outrageous cost overruns, poor post-war planning and failing to be consistent in their messaging to the American people.
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20060216-044828-2780r
