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Permanent war, mantra of fear and economics of disaster

Charles R. Larsen
*** Once they are gone, a massive mop-up operation will involve millions of Americans
perhaps something on the level of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's WPA, rebuilding the country's crumbling infrastructure and polishing our tarnished esteem. Higher taxes for Americans, of course and strong incentives to save rather than to spend. But it's going to take a genuine leader to convince Americans that the country and its
political system are worth saving.***
ANOTHER milestone: Four thousand Americans have now been killed in the war in Iraq. Pundits will moan and groan, but not very loudly. The general public will say ho-hum, since the war has largely dropped out of its consciousness. More disturbingly, the Bush administration's reason for attacking Iraq was retaliation for 9/11, even though it has long been proven that Iraq had no connection to that tragic event. How-ironic then that the
total deaths on 9/11 (not including the 19 hijackers) amounted to 2974, significantly fewer than the deaths of America's armed servicemen and women in a war that should never have happened. But is anyone making these connections?
Americans pay little attention to the details of the war or the astronomical number of Iraqi casualties. The remaining few patriots are still convinced that the invasion was noble and long ago managed to stifle the voices who dared question, and
criticize, the entire facade justifying a preemptive strike and, worse, sending young Americans into harm's way. But wars particularly wars as poorly conceived and executed aS the current disastrous one in Iraq have subtle ways of gnawing into the gut of the aggressor and growing like cancer, slowly at first but then, finally, destroying the corporal body or, in this case, the body politic.
America and unfortunately the entire world will pay a price for this war for the rest of this century. The literal expenses of the war will cost the country in innumerable ways that few have imagined, not simply in dollars but in human casualties.
First, the literal cost in money/dollars. Government statistics that are already several months old cite double the requested (and already allocated) figure of $804 billion dollars; thus, $1.5 trillion, if the so-called hidden costs are included. What's hidden? Veteran benefits and expenses for the thousands upon thousands of injured soldiers expenses that will certainly last for another eighty or ninety years until the last vet of the Iraq war dies somewhere in a hospital around the year 2100. But many other estimates (the most recent by Joseph Stiglitz a Columbia University economist) say the $1.5 trillion will easily double because it doesn't include a penny beyond the figures cited by the most recent
government estimate.
Are we any closer to ending the war? I doubt it. Even if a Democrat becomes president and pulls all American troops out of Iraq (unlikely) what will be the costs of withdrawal including billions of dollars of military equipment and reconstruction for Iraq? We can't simply abandon Iraq's reconstruction after we have destroyed their country.
Thus, the three trillion dollar figure looks rather low, even at this time. Already, the costs are so overwhelmingly burdensome that the federal budget has no money left for increases in any other program.
Virtually all on borrowed money. Use your house as a P>ggy bank and take out another chunk of money to spend once you have refinanced again. But since the United States government has done exactly the same thing
during the past eight years enormous tax cuts, printing and printing increasingly worthless dollars, and spending trillions on a war that can only be paid for by inflating our money--why shouldn't individuals do the same? Banks (not just in the United States) are beginning to collapse because of the sub-prime mortgage mess, as the economic cancer begins to metastasize in the rest of the world's economies ("They're all connected," economists tell us.) The icing on the cake: the Chairman of the Fed who admits he didn't anticipate the debacle with sub-prime mortgages. Tell me, Mr. Greenspan, if a stranger knocked on your door and asked for a huge loan, is it really true that you would give it to him without asking questions about whether he could pay it back?
America's folly, but the
world's disaster.
We are told that the mortgage meltdown is far from over; that housing costs will take several years before they will bottom out; that gasoline will be $4.00 later this year (it is already that in parts of California) and a realistic striking price for gold is $2000 to $5000 per ounce. And the new Chairman of the Fed. Ben Bernanke, reduces the prime rate instead of raising it, inflating everything, so that only Zimbabwe is ahead of the United States with inflation at a rate we once believed inconceivable.
Is there a solution? A fix? Of course, there always is. But it involves pain and Americans do not like pain. We've lost our esteem in the world. Our currency has tanked and increasingly others do not want to use it. By fighting the wrong war. we've emboldened terrorists who cannot believe they have
brought America to its knees with so little effort. And our current leaders scare us with fear, their ubiquitous mantra.
The only thing we need to fear is our current leaders.
Once they are gone, a massive mop-up operation will involve millions of Americans perhaps something on the level of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s WPA, rebuilding the country's crumbling infrastructure and polishing our tarnished esteem. Higher taxes for Americans, of course and strong incentives to save rather than to spend. But it’s going to take a genuine leader to convince Americans that the country and its political system are worth saving. Otherwise, we must anticipate the worst as the United States continues to drag down the rest of the world.
Charles R Larson is Professor of Literature at Amencan Unvers.ty in Washington, 0 C.