Two trillion dollars blown in Iraq – just a footnote?

Posted by Joshua Holland at 8:47 AM on March 1, 2007.

Perhaps I shouldn't take Robert Samuelson's column in the upcoming issue of Newsweek too seriously. Its primary purpose, after all, is to cover Samuelson's own ass ...

A $2 Trillion Footnote?

The costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have far exceeded almost all estimates, but that's much less important than it seems.

Anyone who practices deadline journalism is bound to find much to regret--things you wish you'd said (or hadn't said) and words, arguments and attitudes that, with hindsight, seem poorly chosen. Which brings me to my September 2002 column, "A War We Can Afford." As the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, some readers have suggested that I revisit that column and confess to error. Let me now take up their invitation, because today's ferocious war debate raises many of the same issues.

Yes, that column made big mistakes. The war has cost far more than I (or almost anyone) anticipated.

But far be it for Samuelson to really admit that his 2002 column was both wrong (he wrote: "A possible war with Iraq raises many unknowns, but "can we afford it?" is not one of them. People inevitably ask that question, forgetting that the United States has become so wealthy it can wage war almost with pocket change") and deeply immoral (who the hell bases a decision to go to war on the bottom line?).

No, admitting past error is only expected of presidential candidates; if pundits like Samuelson weren't wholly unaccountable for their blather, Thom Friedman would be a fry chef at McDonald's or one of his other monuments to globalization. Afte that tepid mea culpa, Samuelson sticks to his guns ...

Still, I defend the column's central thesis, which remains relevant today: budget costs should not shape our Iraq policy. Frankly, I don't know what we should do now. But in considering the various proposals--Bush's "surge," fewer troops or redeployment of those already there--the costs should be a footnote. We ought to focus mostly on what's best for America's security, the situation in Iraq and our global influence.

First, let's identify the obvious straw man: nobody (that I can think of) is arguing that U.S. policy should be based on the economics of the war alone. We're not saying, "it costs too much," we're saying "look at the amount of money that's being thrown into an unnecessary, immoral, illegal war that's making us less safe than we were before we launched it." We're saying: "imagine what we might have done with that cash if it wasn't being burned up in a civil war."

In other words, Americans are focused "mostly on what's best for America's security, the situation in Iraq and our global influence," among other concerns (like how many Iraqis are dying -- a small matter issue that doesn't enter into Samuelson's calculus.

The larger point is his inability to connect the two issues. It's not a matter of whether we can find the money to buy all those shiny new weapons systems, it's a question of opportunity costs. What could that $2 trillion have bought in terms of intelligence capacity, equipping first-responders for future emergencies, building "surge capacity" in our healthcare system that would prepare it for a bioterror attack or natural disease epidemic, cargo inspections, coastal defense, the latest bomb-sniffing technologies at airports and a thousand other things. How far could that money go in reducing our green-house gas emissions?

Throwing $two trillion into Iraq directly impacts our ability to allocate resources to our actual defense (in the literal, not the Orwellian sense).

This gets to a larger, and very old critique of the prevalent thinking on foreign policy - of foreign policy Realism. Realists create a false divide between the external and the domestic; they focus on outside military threats at the expense of very real dangers that can arise from within a country's borders, even when the threats from within are just as deadly. After the Cold War, a new security paradigm was starting to emerge: the concept of "inclusive" or "human security." It was a broader concept of security -- one that held that death from old land-mines or from malaria or from tainted drinking water was no less lethal than death dealt by a foreign soldier.

That more expansive view of security obviously has far-ranging implications for policy -- for the distribution of resources. And it was gaining momentum in elite circles until September 10th. But the following day, we're told, "changed everything," and now the debate is between Realists and psychopaths -- call them neocons if you like -- instead of between Realists and advocates of a somewhat broader, more realistic view of "security."

Tagged as: iraq, afghanistan, priorities, samuelson, realism

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.