THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume V, Issue # 64, March 16, 2003
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE WAR WITH IRAQ -- WHAT WILL IT COST?
By Alan Caruba
A friend of mine raised the question, what will this war cost? He meant in pure dollars, not lives, and my reply that was that neither peace nor war is cheap. Freedom, however, is priceless.
The Pentagon spends a billion dollars a day in peacetime, so a few days or a month of war is a relatively small additional expenditure. Think about it; the troops would still exist, the ammo, the weaponry. We maintain a mighty military to be used when it is needed.
We maintain a mighty military because we live in a dangerous world, filled with nation- states run by despots. While constitutional democracy is spreading worldwide, there are still many nation-states throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Asia that fall short of constitutional representative government. There are nations in South America still threatened by Communism. There is still Red China, Cuba, and North Korea. There is still the Balkan tinderbox.
Americans, always reluctant to go to war, always prove themselves supremely good at it. Every enemy has deemed us weak and every one has discovered our talent for wreaking havoc. (And, yes, we have learned the lessons of Vietnam, Desert Storm, and all the beaches we ever stormed, every city in which we ever fought. We don't make the same mistakes twice.)
Every war involves casualties. Americans gave their lives in World War I leaving behind 53,513 dead. Barely a generation later, World War II cost 292,131 American lives. Over 33,667 Americans died to deter North Korean aggression in the 1950s. In Vietnam, the cost was 47,393. By contrast, the Persian Gulf War in 1991 cost 148 lives.
More than 3,000 non-combatants and Pentagon personnel died on American soil on Septembe 11, 2001.
Those Americans who protest war against Iraq have no idea how many of their country- men would die if the threat of al-Qa'ida and the nation-states who support this network of terrorists are not deterred. The war has come to America and now the war has been taken to the enemy in Afghanistan. For years now, we have paid the price with American lives lost in attacks on our troops in Lebanon and Somalia, our diplomats in our embassies in African nations, and our sailors in Yemen.
This is what astonishes me about Saddam Hussein, stalemated in his eight year war with Iran and defeated in his invasion of Kuwait, or Kim Jong Il who has to be truly mad to even contemplate war with us. What level of delusion does it take to think they can take on the greatest military power in the world?
This, I think, is one of the reasons President Bush is going to war. He is not only empow- ered to do so. He is required to do so. He is letting the rest of the world know that he will not allow our nation to be attacked without our enemies paying a price for it. The price is called surrender. The price is to be hunted, captured, and/or killed.
It's called change.
It's called progress.
It's called freedom.
We are the only nation on earth that goes to war for an idea called freedom. We want it for ourselves and we want it for everyone else too.
The cost? The attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon is estimated to have sucked $120 billion dollars out of our economy, approximately twice the cost of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The attack didn't just destroy two buildings and damage a third, it played havoc with the airline industry, hotels, resorts, restaurants, rippling out to under- mine the earnings of countless other elements of the economy. Right now, we are totally stagnant, with investment and hiring decisions being delayed, while we wait for the permission of the world to finish the job of the Persian Gulf War.
Hell is going to come to Iraq, and the hell in which Iraqis have lived for over two decades is going to end.
And, afterward, Iraqis will dance in the streets and throw flowers at their liberators
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
The Middle East & the Arabs
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center (www.anxietycenter.com). He is the author of A POCKET GUIDE TO MILITANT ISLAM and THE UNITED NATIONS VS. THE UNITED STATES, both available from the National Anxiety Center, 9 Brookside Road, Maple- wood, New Jersey, 07040.
Copyright 2003 Alan Caruba
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues
Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity