Don’t Like the War?

One of the great things about travelling in Europe was that I was protected from the intellectually corrosive effect of the twenty-four hour news networks. The geographical distance protected me some as CNN seemed to be the only one that regularly made its cross-Atlantic presence felt. But my own attitude provided the less permeable sort of support as I simply ignored the news. But as I’ve settled back into the rut of my mechanical morning pre-work preparations, I’ve been exposed to a dose of the networks’ bullshit. Not a brain-swelling, fatality-inducing sort of dose, but one that is deleterious to my health, nonetheless.

I don’t care about hurricanes. I don’t care about celebrities. I don’t care about some politician’s faux pas that will probably cost him his job. I do care about the war, but am incensed at the recent bandwagon-like trend of anti-war activism. Very little has changed in our understanding of Iraq in the past four years, yet support for an Iraq war has dropped from about 80% to about 40%. Who is this section of America that agreed with the war a few years back but has since changed its mind? Let me provide some possibilities.

Person Type A: I Didn’t Know People Would Die!

Given the morbid fascination the networks have with fatalities, I deduce that their poll-driven, focus-group news selection process selected fatality statistics as a revenue-generating news thread. I guess our country’s inexorable need for morbid sensationalism guarantees that more death on TV equals more viewers. And as this number increases and war support has decreased, we can deduce that some people didn’t expect people to actually die in this action.

The fact that a couple of thousand of US troops have died in Iraq among hundreds of thousands of soldiers is better attributed to miracle than poor planning. How many people did you expect to die when you were out lecturing us west coast gutless liberals about the need to tackle terrorism on its own turf? And, now that we’ve suffered a measly 1% casualty rate you want to pull out? You fucking coward. Think about the consequences of your actions next time you send our young men to die.

Person Type B: I Didn’t Know It Would Take This Long!

Every morning I hear some geriatric, eighth-term Senator from anonymous Red State explaining his plan for withdrawal that ends with something like “we can withdraw within one year!” Exactly who gave anyone the idea that this Iraqi operation was going to take only a few years? I certainly know that it wasn’t anyone in the current administration. Remember Korea? Germany? Japan? We’re still in those countries. If you really thought that we’d step into Iraq, whip up on some euphamistically labeled Baath loyalists and have our boys back for the next football season then you’re as illiterate as you are stupid. Read a history book.

Person Type C: But It Costs Too Much!

Even a basic understanding of how our government works is sufficient to enable a reasonable estimate of a war’s cost. Peacetime defense spending usually bests $400 billion. Nearly half of our fighting capacity is dedicated to Iraq for a period that could not possibly be less than five years. Even if we estimated that the Iraq war only requires 25% of our annual defense budget spending, we’d arrive at the conclusion that this war will cost us half a trillion dollars.

Now that we’re a few hundred billion in the hole on this operation, and even the rosiest estimates of a five-year operation have all but vanished, the fiscally responsible are crying foul. All I can say is that next time you consider any estimate that the US government provides you of any operation’s cost, you should mentally quadruple that estimate. This works from wars to defense research projects to highway construction.

The only reason for flip-flopping on war support that I can understand is the failed search for WMDs. Even though anyone following our UN investigators’ reports would have known that Iraq had no capability to produce those weapons, I don’t fault someone for naively believing the executive branch that invasion was necessary. I don’t believe that it is incumbent upon every citizen to distrust its government. But is does seem that a little more distrust would have helped us make better decisions before we got into this mess.