Bush’s Trillion Dollar Failed Adventure in Iraq.
Darrell Williams
October 08, 2007
The total cost of this war cannot even be estimated. The annual costs are increasing so dramatically, along with increasing U.S. casualties, that the side effects and repercussions are sending shock waves throughout our economy and the world. Expensive wars can bankrupt a nation. While the war costs are skyrocketing, Bush has been simultaneously cutting taxes. If any manager of any business were to increase spending while simultaneously cutting income they would be immediately fired. But this is exactly what Bush has been doing during his entire administration. This policy is totally irresponsible. The number of U.S. service personal killed is approaching 4000. The number of non military Americans killed in Iraq is even greater. The number of Iraqi casualties is staggering. The number of seriously wounded is in the tens of thousands. The number of returning U.S. soldiers who have or will develop mental problems may be as high as 50,000 per year. The long term costs to American society to care for these physically and mentally disabled veterans is unknown. Also an unknown number of seemingly healthy veterans will likely suffer from the effects of being exposed to the depleted Uranium used in the antiarmor shells. The continued use of these weapons is producing dangerous radiation damage to soldiers and civilians in Iraq. The U.S. is also using chemical weapons which expose the soldiers and civilians to white phosphorus. This exposure will likely cause an increase in cancer and birth defects in the future children of everyone exposed. The long term effects and medical costs of the radiation and chemicals cannot be estimated. The indirect expenses incurred by the families of the veterans for the rest of their lives also cannot be estimated. The soldiers who go to war and the soldiers who return home are not the same people. The personality changes that occur when a young soldier is repeatedly exposed to the brutalities of war, forever changes their lives. Wives and husbands of returning soldiers find themselves married to a stranger. This results in domestic quarrels, divorces, murders and suicides. These traumatic events seriously effect entire families, children, friends and relatives. It has an adverse impact on our entire society.
No one knows how long the Iraq war will last or how long the U.S. will continue to occupy the devastated country. The similarities to both the Korean war and the Vietnam war are many. In all three wars, the U.S. invaded and occupied a sovereign nation. All three countries were experiencing a civil war, though for different reasons. In Korea and Vietnam the civil war between the north and south was primarily about economic systems. In both countries, the north wanted to establish communism and the south, aided and supported by the U.S., wanted to establish capitalism. These two conflicts had decidedly different outcomes. In Vietnam, the U.S. finally withdrew, allowing the Vietnamese people to declare independence, end the civil war and unite the country. In Korea a different outcome resulted. The U.S. has remained in Korea at the partition between the north and south for the past fifty years. The U.S. still has approximately 40,000 soldiers in Korea guarding this border. Korea still remains a divided country. The north has established a communistic government, while the south has established a somewhat capitalistic democracy with U.S. support.
The analogies of these two wars with the Iraq war are many. The U.S. has invaded Iraq and like Korea and Vietnam, Iraq is also experiencing a civil war. The causes of the present Iraqi civil war are partially economic. Different groups, sects or tribes want to control the government and the oil production, which is essentially the only commodity of the nation. But the civil war is also about sectarian religious differences. The two primary Islamic sects, the majority Shiites and the lesser number of Sunnis both want economic and religious control of the country. The Kurds in northern Iraq primarily want independence and control of the northern oil reserves. All three sects want to establish an Islamic theocracy. The Bush administration wants to establish a capitalistic democracy with the U.S. partially controlling the oil resources. It is unlikely that the Iraqi’s will ever consent to Bush’s demands.
At this time the U.S. is in a dilemma in Iraq. Will the final outcome be like the Korean outcome, in which the U.S. continues to occupy the country for decades to come or will the outcome be like Vietnam in which the U.S. redeploys and leaves the nation to solve it’s own problems and declare independence?
In Korea, the final solution resulted in a partition between the north Koreans and the south Koreans. This essentially divided a previously unified nation into two separate nations. Does any foreign nation have the right to do this to a sovereign nation? Should other nations interfere in civil wars?
Imagine what would have happened during the U.S. civil war if other foreign nations had intervened and established a partition between the northern states and the southern states. In that event, the Union and the Confederacy would have become two separate nations. Does any foreign nation have the right to do this?
If the U.S. repeats the Korean solution in Iraq, the nation might be partitioned into three separate nations, or federal districts. The Shiites in the east, the Sunnis in the west and the Kurds in the north. And like the Korean outcome, the U.S. could maintain a peacekeeping force along the partitions forever. This would probably require maintaining a U.S. force of 100,000 or more soldiers on permanent military bases. Again, like the Korean solution, does any foreign nation have the right to subdivide another sovereign nation? Is this proposed continual occupation by the U.S. merely an excuse to remain in control as a colonial manager, for the purpose of controlling the oil revenues? To most observers, this appears to be the only plausible reason for such an expensive prolonged occupation.
The alternate solution would be similar to the Vietnam outcome. The U.S. could redeploy and exit the country. The Iraqi people, like the Vietnam people did, could declare independence from any foreign domination and establish their own government of their own choosing. The U.S. appears to be opposed to this solution because it would leave the U.S. oil companies out of the Iraqi oil production. Obtaining oil company contracts has always been a primary objective of both Bush administrations.
Regardless of the different reasons given by the U.S. administrations in all three of these wars, the fundamental issues are economic. The U.S. government is after all, primarily responsible for the economic stability and growth of our entire nation. The Middle East only has one resource, oil, that is of interest to the U.S. Both U.K. and the U.S. have been involved in, or controlled Iraqi oil resources since the first world war, about 1920. There is no other resource in the world that is more important than oil to the success of American business.
But not all business adventures are successful. The Bush administration has made so many misjudgments in the Iraqi adventure, that the cost to our nation is becoming greater than any future benefits. As it has turned out the goals of the administration have proven to be impossible. The damage to both the Iraqi nation and our own nation will cause problems that will continue into the next century, and a national debt that our grandchildren will inherit.
To continue pouring billions of dollars into a failed adventure is contrary to common sense. George W. Bush had a long history of business failures before he ever entered politics in Texas. Now our nation knows why.
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