1 trillion dollar war

i was reading a left behind New York Post and there was an article on the real costs of the Iraq war. Although Bush said at some point that the cost was around 50-60 billion, some smart people did a proper analysis of all costs and came out on the amount of 1 trillion dollars. that was 10.000$ or so per US household if I remember correctly. That money could also have been used for a mega-mega marshall plan in the middle east, or to pay for social security for a few decades. Also it was claimed that the costs of the war would be easily be paid back by oil revenue. haha.

Is it worth it?

edit - I can't find the original article online but here is a link of a sort to give an idea

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/5/11510/30624

 

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Hell No it isn't worth it.... No.. Wait, That's Just my opinion.If Any one was Actually "getting Something" Out of this "War" and... We weren't filled With BS about it, then We could see if it's worth it. But I don't See how it is worth it.
Of course with you Im terrified to Post anything I may see, you might peg me as having "MY OWN WORLD VIEWS"...

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The decreasing oil production from Iraq is helping the Saudis, and increasing prices are helping the oil companies.

 

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money is something worthless objectively speaking. Money is just kind of a whip forcing people to work at their maximum. One trillion of whips were redistributed among richs and powerful via the war. What is big deal? Making another trillion of whips ain't hard. Oil,especially last droplets of it, on the other hand has certain material value. One can't make that oil with all those imaginary trillions of whips.

 

Hey, it's your money, America, not Canadas'!

 

It will go to a trillion, and Bush shall rank lower than Harding.

 

Luckily, there is a financial limit to all this imperialism...it may be the only limit.

 

Does the trillion not represent a certain amount of resources and labour spent that could have been used elsewhere?

 

Trillion doesn't always represent a certain fixed amount of resources that could be used elsewhere. There should be some kind of consensus as for "where is that elsewhere to spend a trillion?". Defense (or rather offence, in this case) is generally a universal consensus point. Besides, the kind of resources and labour spent in Iraq is rather specific and hard to convert to other uses. Large chunk of those resources and labour would be spent on military anyway(military needs to be trained, fed, paid,... regardless of Iraq).

Again, money is just a thing buying our willingness to work, forcing us to work. We (meaning those on the lower perches of life) can "encourage" others to work with bills we get. Money wielding elites direct our efforts to their benefit using their bills. Let's assume Iraq never happened. Then, few hundreds of billions would be redistributed slightly differently among rich and powerful than they are now. That's all. For the past few millenia, spending patterns of elites didn't change much. Thus, expenses on war in Iraq are irrelevant (for a common Joe at least). Some of them lost, some of them won meagre $ on this war. Average gain = 0.

What I'm trying to say is that under current social system imaginary savings on war are not readily convertable to other uses. Unfortunately, some real lives and lots of nonrenewable resources were lost in this war. That's by far greater loss than that trillion.

 

These sort of "real cost" estimates are sort of decieving. For instance, I was at this talk and this agriculturalist told everyone that someone looked at the "real cost" of producing X amount of grain, impact to the environment. So he totalled the amount of asphault that was laid down for the trucks to move grain, the amount of oil that consumed was consumed in doing so. When he got to calculating the cost of moving screws from the plant in NY to the truck plant in Detroit, he called it quits.

What counts as a"real cost"?

Arguably, that money could be spent on other, better things. Things that everyone gets to use and benefit from. As it stands, the money spent on the war doesn't benefit anyone; it's actually being used to kill and maim people.

Though, any money spent counts as money spent, does it not? All that money had to go somewhere. Think of all the people employed on that money, and then they'll spend that money, and then those people will spend that money.... Great trickle down!

 

Here is the original paper. In hindsight it was easy to find.

http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/Cost_of_War_in_Iraq.pdf

 

Some quotes to stimulate the discussion:

The costs are not decreasing, au contraire, the seem to be increasing.

Estimating costs:

Injured:

Recruiting costs:

Loss of image is costing america?

real costs?

And do you think troops will start withdrawing in 2006?

More direct costs are mentioned I will not go into.

Then there are the economic costs:

Budgetary costs

Would there have been a war if Congress had known the real costs?

What could have been done with the money that went into the war?

 

Bush could have bought his way out of foreign oil dependancy by developing alternative fuel technologies - thus eliminating any military interest in the region.

...far fewer dead bodies to contend with.

 

In the first few weeks after Bagdad fell to the invaders (or "liberators" to be PC) Donald Rumsfeld blamed the wide spread looting on a "hand full of thugs." He assured Americans that Iraq would soon be on the "road to democracy" and it's oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction, etc.

Fortunately, this clear sighted man, with such a great understanding of Iraq, is still leading the US and advising GWB on what to do next. His "hands" must be very big and growing every week, as surely such a wise man could not have been wrong about there being only a "handfull of thugs" making trouble.

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Is that ethical btw? To invade a country and use its resources to pay for the invasion?

 

I think you said somewhere recently that your are Dutch or live in Netherlands. Assuming this is true, Donald R. asked me to tell you the origin of his Ethics is Dutch, an old family set of morals handed down from father to son for about 400 years.

These morals originated with their Great ...great...great ....grandfather, a very important man in Dutch history. Yes, it was he who founded the Dutch East India trading company, which stationed agents in the far East and as the price for "reconstructing them," (Christinizing a few heathen), took their wealth back to the Neatherlands. In this fine old tradition, Donald is making sure, that most of the oil wealth is taken back to US, specificly transferred to Halliburton.

 

I was merely wondering if have different standards than we used to have. Sometimes the idealist pops up in me.

But let me rephrase the question then. I thought that we pretend to live in modern times with a new set of values and morals. And this excluded the behaviour of invading a country with the aim of using its resources to pay for the war. So, i thought it must be 'unethical' to openly discuss this war of 'profit' as being a war fought for profit. (Even though it apparently is going to bankrupt the US).

I thought these things were just said in the backroom. Hence my naive question.

 

america is plunging into millions of debt each second of each day!

 

IMHO, there has not been much change in governmental ethics in man's recorded history, and I speculate not even in a much longer period. (I would give 2 to 1 odds against the proposition that the very first government was ethical and not hypocritical in sense that it did what was in the interest of the leaders who then said they were acting in the interest of the people.)

It is however now true that the old hypocrisy between acts and deeds is now discussable, sort of like (and probably related to) the fact that children now can be told that sex exists, even in the public schools, and other things that were once "forbidden subjects" are now “discussable.“ Perhaps in another, 10,000 years or so, this discussion will actual result in a change of governmental ethics, but I doubt it will occur that quickly.

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