Online at: http://politicalaffairs.net/article/view/1351/1/

Cost of War: The Impact of War on US Communities

By Joel Wendland

Archives - Dates and Topics

2005 – online

May – June 2005

June 20 – 26 click here for related stories: peace/antiwar

6-22-05, 11:53 am

This week several thousand supporters of public education marched in Lansing, Michigan demanding that Michigan’s government fully fund public education. A severe budget crisis brought on by massive cuts in grants and spending by the federal government and grinding economic recession in that state has the Republican-controlled legislature targeting public schools and colleges for cuts.

Michigan’s troubles are only one of many country wide examples where local and state budget crises have been exacerbated by Bush administration policies.

The $210 billion Iraq war price tag could have paid for much needed programs in the US, including: health insurance for 46 million people, over 3 million new elementary school teachers, 24,000 new schools, 27 million children could have been placed in Head Start programs, or 1.8 million new affordable housing units.

Economists and labor movement analysts have argued that Bush’s free trade policies, corporate tax loopholes that subsidize the relocation of US industry to other countries, and the Republicans’ tax cuts for the rich have pushed the nation’s fiscal problems to the breaking point.

One area of spending that has had the most immediate impact on the ability of local communities to provide public services – such as public transportation, education, health care, environmental clean up, and more – is the Iraq war.

In September 2002, a full 7 months after the Bush administration secretly determined that it would start another war with Iraq, Bush officials were asked how much they thought a war would cost.

The official administration line was that it would cost roughly $50-60 billion, around the same price tag for the first war with Iraq. Former Budget Director Mitch Daniels and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted on a $50 billion figure.

If troop withdrawal began now, a serious dent could be made in future deficits by returning lost revenues to the states. Education could easily be fully funded; local economies and crumbling infrastructures could be rebuilt. Funds for public transportation, health care, and other services hit hard by the loss of revenue to Bush’s war could be replenished.

One administration official, Lawrence Lindsey, Bush’s assistant for economic policy, told Congress that it would cost about 1-2% of GDP, or between $100 and $200 billion.

His estimate, now proven too conservative, was described by Bush officials as "too high" and overstated. Lindsey was promptly fired.

And, in the attempt to sidestep the legal responsibility of an occupying force to provide resources for reconstruction, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz insisted that oil revenues of $50-$100 billion annually would cover reconstruction costs.

Aside from sheer speculation and the imperialist arrogance of insisting that Iraqis should pay for Bush’s war on their country, the administration’s approach to the public discourse on how much war would cost taxpayers was part of a concerted PR campaign to eliminate obstacles to war.

Thanks to recently publicized secret British government memos, we are coming to learn a great deal about the administration’s plans for the Iraq invasion. (Read the memos at AfterDowningStreet.org.)

For example, the secret memos show that British officials believed that the Bush administration knew that its case for war – Iraq’s possession of WMD, its imminent threat, links to Al Qaeda, and more – was "thin" and lacked credibility. Further, British officials believed that the administration was fabricating evidence and manipulating facts for its already determined invasion policy in order to get public and congressional backing.

According to British officials who wrote the secret memos, at least by March 2002, the administration was determined to invade on the patently illegal basis of "regime change."

Prior to this, the administration had talked about attacking Iraq from the beginning. According to former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, the administration’s very first foreign policy meeting focused on Iraq and the question of regime change. Immediately after 9/11, we know that Donald Rumsfeld raised the question of launching attacks on Iraq in retaliation for Al Qaeda’s crime.

The administration then launched a campaign to remove obstacles to going to war.

At the UN, John Bolton pressured some countries into firing chemical weapons expert Jose Bustani who called for sending specialists to Iraq to find and destroy any chemical weapons. The administration knew that if this were accomplished a rationale for a full-scale invasion would be postponed or eliminated.

The administration then worked hard to de-legitimize and demonize the UN weapons inspections regime by distorting its accomplishments in destroying Iraq’s WMD. Prior to the war, UN inspectors estimated they had destroyed 98% of Iraq’s WMD; results of US-led searches for WMD since show they did better than that.

One final obstacle to war was the estimate of the enormous cost to the American people for the invasion.

At this point the administration ordered strict discipline over public discussion of the cost of war. Lindsey, who provided Congress with a reasonable estimate – based on an underestimation of the length of the war and occupation period and relatively minor reconstruction costs – became the example set for administration officials who presented reasonable claims to the public: "You’re fired!"

Now it is more than two years later. Generals are saying that based on the experiences on the ground, if Bush’s obstinate policy is allowed to continue, occupation could last for many years.

So far $180 billion has been spent, including $9 billion simply lost due to corruption and mismanagement, according to quiet internal reports to Congress. A total of over $210 billion has been earmarked for spending, according to analysis done by the National Priorities Project. Untold millions have been paid for bloated "no-bid" contracts to companies with inside people in the administration, like Halliburton.

No Iraqi oil revenues have been used to offset costs and very little reconstruction has taken place, as many parts of the country remain without electricity, potable water, jobs, health care services, schools, and more. And the destruction continues.

Reasonable estimates say that in the every near future, unless troop withdrawal begins, the cost will touch $300 billion.

According to the National Priorities Project the $210 billion could have paid for much needed programs in the US, including: health insurance for 46 million people, over 3 million new elementary school teachers, 24,000 new schools, 27 million children could have been placed in Head Start programs, or 1.8 million new affordable housing units.

For Michigan taxpayers the cost of war has amounted to $5.6 billion, or $2.8 billion for each year of the war. According to the Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, the 2006 budget deficit will total $1.7 billion.

Without Bush’s war, it is reasonable to conclude that states like Michigan wouldn’t have to be in the fiscal mess they find themselves in.

In fact, if troop withdrawal began now, a serious dent could be made in future deficits by returning lost revenues to the states. Education could easily be fully funded; local economies and crumbling infrastructures could be rebuilt. Funds for public transportation, health care, and other services hit hard by the loss of revenue to Bush’s war could be replenished.

--Reach Joel Wendland at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.