The Cost of WAR

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Not Afraid

Can we have anarchy and still get arts funding?

Yes, but probably not the arts funding you'd want. When Americans collectively decide to sponsor the arts, what you get is The Transformers.

I don't object to single payer government run health care because of the cost. I would still object to it if it turned out it would cost 1/10th what we collectively pay for it. I object to the form.

I supported the war in Iraq because of a threat I believed was significant enough to warrant action. That threat, it turns out, was not real. Knowing what I know now, I would of course not have supported the war then. But I didn't know it then.

So, we're in a war and I do not think it has been well managed and this has caused an inflation in the cost but it is a mess that needs to be dealt with. At this point I don't know to what degree the involvement needs to be military but I also don't think it is a clear but case where we should just wipe our hands and move on. Even if it is because of us that it is so, Iraq is now a major concentration for Al Qaeda and that shouldn't be ignored while we move our troops back to Kuwait and let the Sunnis and Shia blow each other up.

On the other hand, I don't think the war has cost us enough. We aren't really asked to sacrifice anything (and in the grand scheme of things $100 billion per year isn't a significant drain on our economy). There was an article about a month ago about a new Humvee design that has reduced IED fatalities to near zero (as of the article nobody had been killed in one don't know if that has changed in the last month) and they are getting them into combat zones as fast as possible but they can only roll off the manufacturer's line so quickly. I can't help but think in an earlier time when our leaders were inclined to ask sacrifice of the citizenry that the president or secretar of defense or someone would have been on TV and radio saying "we need 100,000 of these things in two months so we ask for America's help in making sure we get them."

It is bizarre to me that during World War II a single shipyard in Vancouver, Washington, could turn out an entire ship every day but we can't get more than 100 Humvees a week (or whatever the numbers) were because we must go on as if life is normal.

But that is all independent of the healthcare issue, so far as I'm concerned. With the money spent in Iraq you could also give every American family a new fuel efficient hybrid vehicle but that doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.