Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by John Cole| 6 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
Larry Lindsey’s op-ed in USA Today is a must read:
A year ago, while I was serving as President Bush’s White House economic adviser, I caused quite a controversy when I said that our objective in Iraq would be well worth spending 1% to 2% of America’s gross domestic product. At the time, the president had not made any decisions about war with Iraq, so putting any price tag on the mission
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Apples to Apples
Larry Lindsey takes down people who say that liberating Iraq will be expensive. “It now seems that the cost of deposing Saddam Hussein and re-establishing civil government in Iraq will be in that range. Critics are using words like “massive” and “stagg…
Apples to Apples
Larry Lindsey takes down people who say that liberating Iraq will be expensive. “It now seems that the cost of deposing Saddam Hussein and re-establishing civil government in Iraq will be in that range. Critics are using words like “massive” and “stagg…
Kimmitt
A few things:
1) I think we can now dispense with the “Saddam was a threat on par with that associated with WWII” meme.
2) His numbers appear to be essentially correct — Vietnam cost us 12% of one year’s GDP, and WWII cost us 130% of one year’s GDP at the time (though that’s a mite inflated, as the US was climbing out of the Depression at the start of the war).
3) We’re not talking about spending 1-2% of GDP. 1-2% of GDP assumes we’re done in a couple of years. Most estimates I’ve seen place the cost at something closer to 5-15% of GDP, which is Vietnam War levels of spending — are there plans to raise taxes to generate this revenue?
Andrew Lazarus
Kimmitt put his finger on the big omission: we paid for WW2 with extraordinarily high taxes and rationing, and Johnson’s refusal to raise taxes to pay for Vietnam was, IIRC, the beginning of a period of inflation and poor economic growth.
Leaving aside whether the Iraq War (described by Bush as part of our commitment to “peaceful change”) was justified, it has to be paid for.
The Federal Budget was drawn up without any $100+ Bn for Iraq, there isn’t any Rainy Day fund, it’s an unexpected expense just like losing your transmission, and can we please have a more intelligent conversation about whether to pay cash for the adventure or charge it to the national credit card? The Administration’s position, as best as I can tell, is that money spent on the Iraq War doesn’t really count; something like Bill Clinton’s attitude towards certain sex acts.
HH
Let’s also dispense with the “Saddam killed JFK” meme and other memes that didn’t really exist…
Kimmitt
People say the damndest things.