I grew up reading comic books wanting to be a superhero. Comics taught me that those who speak the truth are heroes, all the rest are liars.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The Cost Of War

The cost of the war in dollars: 12 billion dollars a month! But it doesn’t stop there…lives, families, healthcare, environment…

FYI- Interesting read from Kung Fu Monkey “lions lead by donkeys”

….I set forth, as first principle, that this Administration is failing to do its job in fulfilling our responsibilities to the troops.

We will make sure you have the equipment you need.It is inarguable that the troops were sent into Iraq without the proper body armor or vehicles. Even now we have reports that Halliburton has been providng the troops with contiminated water. (and so imagine the shit they're getting away with we don't know about) *

This is the richest nation in the world, and it's not like Saddam went all Pearl Harbor on our asses. We had a fair chunk of time to figure out there'd be shooting in the sand. Hell, it was on our own timetable. This is inexcusable.

We will make sure you have a clearly defined mission.

"Fighting terror" is not a clearly defined mission -- it is a talking point. A clearly defined mission has goals and timetables, and when those timetables are not met, then strategies are revised. "We will stand down as the Iraquis stand up" is not a strategy. What's the timetable for rebuilding Iraqi troop strength? What will we change in our attempts to build up those troops if those timetables are not met? Is our mission to stay until there's a fully functioning Iraqi Army and fully functioning state security apparatus? If so, what are those numbers? Is the training going as fast as we hope, or should adjustments be made? Is our mission to stay until the Iraq infrastructure has been repaired? To what levels? Is our mission to kill Zarqawi? To defeat the insurgency, or just control it?

Numbers, dates, plans, percentages -- this is the way grown-ups plan and fight a war. "Stay the course" is not a strategy. If it were, then Macarthur would be buried on a Phillipino beach, George Washington would never have scarpered back across to Long Island under cover of fog, Lincoln would have let McClellan ride out the rest of the Civil War, and hell, Reagan would have let Dick Cheney talk him into never trusting Gorbachev.We will make sure these missions are as well-planned as possible.

If you can't agree that post-war planning was a joke , you're not even living on thesame planet as I am. Go ahead and disagree with the Joint Chiefs. I'll wait here.

We will take care of your families while you are gone, and Take care ofyou whe you come home.

There are already homeless Iraq War veterans, the VA is underfunded and VA benefits have been if not cut then, ahem, "stop-lossed" at least three times by this Administration. Add to that the Bankruptcy Bill passed without exemptions for troops ...You can link-hunt all day. The point is by the broadest, most easily agreed upon standards our side of the covenant with the troops is not being upheld. We are culpable, we are responsible, were are in fact guilty if we do not rectify this situation. And the only way to rectify this situation, in our form of government, is to go chew the shit out of the guys whose job it is to execute our will.

The problem is, these yahoos have managed an ugly trick. They have turned criticism of the policies of Bastards in Suits into criticism of The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. This, of course, is completely wrong, as one can easily tell the difference between the Bastards in Suits and The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. One group is in Suits, and Not Getting Shot At, while another is in Uniform, and Getting Shot At. Please, try to grasp this. Not the same,

There is a flip side. Some people confuse supporting the Bastards in Suits for supporting The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. This is, again, ridiculous. If the history of modern warfare has taught us anything, it's that the Bastards in Suits spend an awful lot of time working the kinks out of plans involving The People in Uniform dying unpleasantly. They often screw that up. When they do screw up, it is incumbent upon Bastards in Suits to suffer criticism and fix the situation, as by comparison The People in Uniform are suffering shattered skulls, missing limbs and death. Which is, on my scale, exponentially more traumatic than criticism…

2 comments:

Charley Underwood said...

More figures to consider:

An estimated million extra Iraqi deaths since the war began.

An estimated two million Iraqis displaced internally, as well as just under two million Iraqis who have fled to other countries.

Economists estimate that the long-term costs of the war will surpass one trillion dollars, by the time we pay pensions for injured vets, death benefits for their survivors, and calculate the cost of work lost. As the war continues, we approach two trillion dollars.

Some costs defy monetary estimates, of course. How much is it worth, for example, to transform the American reputation from beacon of liberty to exemplar of torture? What dollar amount can be put on the civil liberties that we have lost? What is the figure we could put on trust that Americans once had in their government, but have now lost?

War is costly. Peace, if we ever have it, is priceless.

truthsurfer said...

Amen brother