True War Costs

[Daveparts]

True War Costs
By David Glenn Cox



We throw around numbers until we become numb to their meanings. They are abstract numbers anyhow, 90 billion 120 billion. We understand what that means as numbers but we can’t fathom, nor can get our brains to imagine the true worth of that amount of currency.

After the invasion of Iraq the collation provisional authority sent 12 billion dollars in cash to Iraq. One shipment had two tractor-trailers loaded to the gunnels with pallets of $100 dollar bills. 2.4 billion more money than had ever been shipped by the New York Federal Reserve in its history. The money was to be used to restart the Iraqi economy and to fund rebuilding projects. 8.8 billion of the 12 billion was lost outright, billions more that can’t be accounted for due to poor record keeping.

But this staggering sum is what it cost the US taxpayer to fund the war for 30 days. The fortunes of the richest men in the world Carlos Slim Helu’ with 150 billions in assets could watch his fortune evaporate in little more than a year. Warren Buffet barely more than three months and Bill Gates not even six months.

But this is mere cash, printed paper with lithographs of dead Presidents. Bonded notes of indebtedness holding only the value others say it has. Ask Bill Gates? He was the richest man in the world until Carlos Slim Helu’ knocked him off that throne. He was replaced due to currency fluctuations and the declining value of the dollar. So even the richest man in America is paying for this war.

But what value does that money hold to those who have lost a loved one? Officially we have lost 3,838 servicemen and women killed in Iraq plus another 453 more in Afghanistan. To their families all that money is worthless paper, as twice that amount wouldn’t bring their loved ones back and won’t ever ease their pain. The wounded would fill a stadium maybe the NFL will hold a bowl game in their honor, the wounded bowl. Probably not, the idea is to not show them but to sweep them under the rug.

To make military hospitals and their shortcomings short term memory events because it only goes to remind you of what this war is costing American families. 3,838 plus 453 more is 4,241 officially or 8,582 parents that have lost their child. That’s 15,964 grandparents that have lost their grandchild plus countless brothers and sisters aunts and uncles that have had a hole torn in the fabric of their lives that will never be mended.

But these were young men an women, living young lives, with young wives and infant children who will only know of their parent from a picture on the wall. Who will spend the rest of their lives asking, why did it have to be my dad or mom? So the circle continues to expand, as they too will pay for this war. Every birthday Christmas, thanksgiving or 4th of July will remind them of their loss and reinforce the question. Why?

When will it end? We don’t know, will it ever end? We can’t say. Yet almost everyone agrees that the war must end. Polls by a wide plurality show the American people want it to end sooner rather than later. But those same polls indicate the front runners in both political parties supporting the continuation of the wars so somebody’s poll is wrong. They can’t both be right, either the American public want the war to continue and are schizophrenic enough to think they can have it both ways. Or the political parties don’t give a damn what the American public wants because after all you’ve only got two choices.

This too is a cost of the war; war is good for business. In 2004 the top ten military contractors donated almost eight million dollars of company funds to political campaigns. It would be foolish indeed for them to donate those funds to those candidates advocating for peace. This amount doesn’t include personal contributions by CEO’s or Wall Street executives and traders cashing in on the death and destruction. These funds were generated by their profits; profits made from selling military hardware to the government and paid for with your tax dollars. This too is the cost of war.

But let’s draw back, lets look at the small picture rather than the large. In 2003 I purchased a new vehicle I was commuting so mileage was a consideration. In 2003 it cost me $20.00 to fill the tank yesterday it cost me $41.00. We can argue about this and that and about how much the price of fuel would have gone up anyway without the war. But it cannot be denied that the war is a major factor. At a tank of gas a week that’s an increase of $1,092 per year but lets just attribute half of that to the war. With 243,023,485 registered cars in the United States let’s assume that half of them consume a tank of gas a week. The cost of the war for the average consumer boggles the calculator.

The government asserts that the inflation rates are at 3to 4% or 15 to 20% over 5 years. But fuel is a fundamental commodity how can it’s price double and not affect the economy? School districts are operating thousands of school buses and how can the cost of fuel not bust their budgets? Trucking companies, grocery stores, farmers and the inflation rate is really 3 to 4 %?

The pundits assert we are in good times that the market is fundamentally strong and if we factor out fuel prices and the mortgage credit slump we are doing great. Well if you factor out icebergs and the lifeboat shortage the Titanic’s maiden voyage was a wild success as well. But it all goes back to the war and the cost of the war, the hole in our financial bucket that can never be filled.

In the end as always, in the end we have to ask ourselves, was it worth it? What have we gained verses what we have lost and what we must pay, how much and for how long. We’ve only made the down payment on this war this is only the beginning as the ground is shifting under our feet. Pakistan is at war, albeit a civil war but it is war none the less. Turkey is threatening to join the war in Iraq against the Kurds. Where will that leave the US? Caught between their own proxy client state and a NATO ally. Israel has attacked Syria for an alleged nuclear program because Syria had a rectangular building that looked like a rectangular building in North Korea. The administration daily issues verbose warnings to Iran about doing the same things that the US is helping India to do.

President Bush has warned President Putin that if he wishes to avoid world war three he must stop Iran. But look around George; look at the wreckage created by an absence of true diplomacy. A diplomacy designed not to reach accords but to back adversaries in to a corner leaving war as the only course left open. Like the shifting sands on the desert the winds of war blow where they will. Once the fires are started they know longer answer to their masters.

It doesn’t take a leader to create war it only takes the absence of leadership working for peace that creates war. We are upside down in a war of folly, a war we can’t afford and can never even hope to pay for. A war of pride and avarice, a war for the few at the expense of the many. How much will this war truly cost? God help us, it is unknowable.