Five Years of War
Floor Speech
Madam Speaker, as we mark the fifth anniversary of the ill-planned and ill-executed war in Iraq, I rise to draw thc House's attention to two articles from the Chicago Tribune about the lasting damage done by the conflict. [From the Chicago Tribune, Mar. 16, 2008]
BY ANY CALCULUS, WAR'S COST CRUEL: POLITICS, MONEY, BLOOD--ALL SHOW A PAINFUL BOTTOM LINE
(By David Greising)
It's a cold calculus, trying to estimate the cost of a war.
What is an Iraqi life worth? The life of an American GI? It's no easier estimating the value of removing Saddam Hussein from power than it is calculating the sum cost of lifetime health care for a host of disabled American soldiers.
When politicians talk about the war's costs in terms of lives and treasure, they don't necessarily expect someone to actually pull out a spreadsheet and start running the numbers.
But that is what has happened with the Iraq war. And as we approach the 5-year anniversary of the initial March 20, 2003, ``shock and awe'' aerial assault on Baghdad, it is worth noting an important shift in the accounting of the conflict's cost.
Those who opposed the war are finding that the costs far exceeded anything they would have expected, or might have argued, at the time the conflict started. The most notable and authoritative such argument is put forward by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who puts an eye-grabbing, ultimate bottom line on the seemingly endless U.S. commitment to Iraq: at least $3 trillion. That's trillion, with a ``T.''
Those who argued during the run-up to war that armed conflict would be more economical than the cost of containing Hussein have shifted fields. Instead of arguing, as some once did, that America's Iraq adventure might actually turn a profit once the country's vast oil wealth began to flow, they now put forward a more nuanced argument.
On a purely fiscal basis, they now acknowledge, the war has been at best a wash. But looked at as a total package--taking into account the benefits of removing a tyrant from power and thrusting Iraq into its post-Hussein period, however bloody and chaotic--they say armed intervention was still the more attractive alternative.
A trio of University of Chicago economists sought to estimate the cost of containing Hussein had there been no U.S.-led invasion. Their 2006 paper pegged it at $700 billion over an unspecified period of years.
That estimate figures in the extra U.S. military equipment and manpower that would have been needed to keep Hussein within his borders and keep his hands off Kuwait. It includes the cost of weapons inspection programs, of economic boycotts, of oil that would remain in the ground and a rate of premature Iraqi deaths ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 per year, based on Hussein's bloody track record and mismanagement of the country.
"When people talk about the cost of war, as an economist, you have to ask, `In comparison to what?''' said Kevin Murphy, one of the U. of C. economists.
Though he faults President Bush for errors in execution, he believes war was the better option.
"I don't hear Joe Stiglitz saying the best world is the world where Saddam stays around as long as possible because it costs too much to make him leave," Murphy said.
He has a fair point. Stiglitz spends little time contemplating either the economic or moral consequences of allowing Hussein to remain in power. Perhaps that is because Stiglitz cannot take his eyes off the financial and human catastrophe that is unfolding before the nation's eyes.
Bringing important new scholarship to the book ``The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict,'' Stiglitz and co-author Linda Bilmes spend little time contemplating what-ifs. Instead they turn a calculating eye to the economic consequences of the American military invasion--and to the vital policy considerations presented by both its financial and human costs.
There is the expected, grim accounting that any actuary might calculate. The cost of 4,000 American troops' lives, for example, runs to roughly $28 billion. War outlays have added $1 trillion to the national debt, and could run to $2 trillion over time, the authors calculate.
One of the most important calculations is an aspect of the war often ignored by the politicians and pundits who are not quite as handy with a calculator as Stiglitz is: The staggering, long-term toll of veterans' health care, disability benefits and Social Security disability pay. Add them up, and even in a best-case scenario they amount to $371 billion, according to the authors' calculations.
Stiglitz expected his calculations would come under criticism, as they have. But he said the larger purpose--putting some price tag on the war--is important.
"The public ought to have some accounting of the costs," he said in an interview.
"Obviously, after Pearl Harbor, you wouldn't sit down and say, 'How are we going to respond?'" Stiglitz said. "But this was a war of choice. We didn't have to go to war. We had a choice of timing, and a choice of whether to go to war at all."
The debate is not purely among economists, obviously. But even among political scientists who supported the war, Stiglitz's view is starting to take hold.
Michael O'Hanlon, a security expert at the Brookings Institution who runs a project that compiles all manner of data on present-day Iraq--from military and civilian deaths to commodity costs to public opinion--said he cannot ignore the negatives: a huge increase in violence in Iraq, the lack of political stability, the inability to find weapons of mass destruction and oil prices at $110 a barrel.
O'Hanlon supported the initial American invasion, and he gave carefully delineated backing to the troop surge a year ago. Today, though, ``common sense ultimately pushes me toward the Stiglitz view if I had to look at just the bottom line,'' O'Hanlon said.
The question for Americans, ultimately, no longer is whether going to war made sense. Today, as we head toward the presidential election, the question is whether we keep U.S. troops in Iraq or start bringing them back.
Based on governmental budget figures, several economists have put the cost of the Iraq war at $12 billion a month. Stiglitz figures the actual cost probably is at least twice that.
And putting a final fiscal argument to the test, Stiglitz invokes a tenet of economics that is hammered home at the U. of C. business school itself: The fallacy of the ``sunk cost.''
People throw good money after bad, in hopes of recovering what they first invested, even though every new dollar just perpetuates a lost cause.
Five years into the war, Americans must decide whether we are caught up in a sunk-cost fallacy. But in this case, the cost is not counted just in dollars and cents. It is tallied in the impact on American security, and in the cost of American and Iraqi lives.
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[From the Chicago Tribune, Mar. 19, 2008]
5 YEARS AFTER: FLOWERS, RUINS; IRAQ'S TORN SOCIAL FABRIC MAY BE THE HARDEST ITEM TO MEND AS THE COUNTRY MAKES FITFUL PROGRESS
(By Liz Sly)
BAGHDAD.--On Baghdad's battered streets, signs of the progress made over the past year mingle uneasily with the debris of the violent upheaval that has torn Iraq apart over the past five years.
The ubiquitous concrete blast walls that seal off Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods and protect government buildings serve as a reminder of the ever-present threat of suicide bombings and sectarian violence. But they have been brightly painted with flowers, animals and scenes of Iraqi life, bringing a splash of color to the decrepit, dusty streets.
Freshly planted marigolds bloom along the sidewalks, beside the wreckage of buildings destroyed in air raids and suicide bombings that still have not been rebuilt.
Many shopping streets and markets have sprung back to life, rejuvenated by the improvements in security that have taken place in recent months. In yet other neighborhoods, whole streets have been emptied by the flight of more than 1.1 million Baghdadis from their homes.
Compared with a year ago, the improvements brought about by the surge of an extra 30,000 U.S. troops are manifest. The U.S. military says the violence is down to levels not seen since 2005, permitting a sense of normality to return to many areas. A broken country
But 5 years after the U.S.-led coalition launched the war that was to bring freedom, democracy and prosperity to a long-suffering populace, Iraq remains a broken country, with no clear sense of when, how or even if it is going to be fixed.
U.S. commanders are the first to acknowledge the enormity of the challenges that lie ahead.
"The gains are fragile and they are tenuous and until they are cemented by national reconciliation, by truly resolving the big political questions that are necessary, by truly getting the economy going again... until all of that happens, then understandably what has been achieved on the ground will be a bit fragile," Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said in an interview.
The statistics tell the story of a nation still a long way from recovery: About 60 percent of Iraqis lack access to clean drinking water, and 4 million don't get enough to eat, according to the United Nations. Electricity is supposed to average 7 hours a day in Baghdad, but many areas still receive only 2 to 3 hours a day. An estimated 151,000 Iraqis have died during the war, as have nearly 4,000 U.S. troops.
And the biggest undertaking of all will be healing the sectarian divide that opened wide and engulfed the country in bloodshed in 2006-07, after the attack on a holy Shiite shrine in Samarra, Petraeus said.
"It did incredible damage to the social structure. I'm talking about the tearing of the fabric of Iraqi society and I think that has probably been the most significant damage that has been sustained," he said. "And that is something that is going to take years."
Whether Iraq has the luxury of years to heal is in question. The extra troops of the "surge" are going home by July, and the U.S. presidential election calls into doubt the future strength of any force that remains.
Meanwhile, the two other factors that contributed to the success of the surge, the Sunni revolt against Al Qaeda in Iraq and the cease-fire declared by the Shiite Mahdi Army militia, cannot be counted on to endure.
Far from ending the civil conflict, the deployment of extra U.S. troops rather served to freeze it.
Neighborhoods have been pacified to a large extent because local feuding factions concluded it was no longer in their interests to continue fighting a beefed-up U.S. force, or in many instances because members of the opposite sect were driven out altogether.
For many, the war's chief legacy has been one of disappointment. "I was expecting to travel the world and now I can't even go to Washash," said Ammar Yahya, 33, referring to a Baghdad neighborhood now controlled by the Mahdi Army. Concrete walls
He is a Sunni living in the troubled Dora district, surrounded by the high concrete walls that have helped secure many neighborhoods but which have also left communities isolated. Friends and relatives don't dare visit him, and he is reluctant to leave because most journeys require traveling through Shiite neighborhoods.
"We were so very happy when the Americans came," he said. "Now I wish we had stayed under Saddam's tyranny."
An ABC poll of 2,200 Iraqis conducted for the fifth anniversary showed that 46 percent now expect improvements in the coming year, up from 39 percent last August but still below the 69 percent who were optimistic in November 2005. And 55 percent now say their own lives are going well; that is down from 71 percent in late 2005.
"Give it time," said Said Hakki, a Shiite who returned from exile and now heads the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization. "Security is just beginning to improve. I think the glass is more than half full. We've got cell phones, satellite dishes, and how many new newspapers do we have? Under Saddam, bananas were like a dream.
"Iraq is a war zone. There are many different factions still settling their scores. The Shiites feel the Sunnis were harsh to them for the past 35 years and they want to get their rights back, but with time and understanding and reconciliation things might change."
But reconciliation is proving elusive. Even the mainstream Sunni National Accord Front, which has seats in Iraq's parliament, refused to attend a "national reconciliation conference" summoned Tuesday by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Many Iraqis question the Shiite-led government's commitment to reconciliation with its former Sunni foes.
"The political leaders have no national vision," said Saad al-Hadithi, a political scientist at Baghdad University. "Their goal is to achieve benefits for their own specific group, This is why they don't want to share power or let anyone else in."
Petracus points to other recent gains, such as signs of improvement in the economy. "The difference over a year ago is very dramatic, there has been very substantial progress," he said. "It does give a sense of what might be if we can build on it and continue on the trajectory that we've seen now for a good four or live months."
But in terms of repairing the country's torn social fabric, the task has hardly even begun, he said.
"People say, have there been stitches put back in that fabric? I'd say we're just trying to line the fabric up and to just get the situation calm enough so that the seamstress can put a couple of stitches into it," he said.
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