Musing's musings

Madness

Just before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Dick Cheney went on Press the Meat and pooh-poohed Tim Russert's estimates of how much the war would cost:

MR. RUSSERT: Every analysis said this war itself would cost about $80 billion, recovery of Baghdad, perhaps of Iraq, about $10 billion per year. We should expect as American citizens that this would cost at least $100 billion for a two-year involvement.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I can’t say that, Tim. There are estimates out there. It’s important, though, to recognize that we’ve got a different set of circumstances than we’ve had in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan you’ve got a nation without significant resources. In Iraq you’ve got a nation that’s got the second-largest oil reserves in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. It will generate billions of dollars a year in cash flow if they get back to their production of roughly three million barrels of oil a day, in the relatively near future. And that flow of resources, obviously, belongs to the Iraqi people, needs to be put to use by the Iraqi people for the Iraqi people and that will be one of our major objectives.

As it turns out, Russert's estimate was pretty egregiously lowball. As of the time of this posting, the Iraq war has cost us more than $720 billion (at a rough estimate). The Afghanistan war that President Obama is ratcheting up in the latest of a long line of futile attempts by western colonial powers to control that particular neck of the woods, has cost us on the order of $270 billion. Total spending on those two wars since 2001 (including enforcement, logistics, etc.) is already more than $1 trillion.

According to the National Priorities Project, if we hadn't flushed that $1.05 trillion down the toilet, here are some of the things we could have gotten for the same amount of money:

• health care for 308,396,946 people for one year
• 22,599,968 public safety officers for one year
• 17,944,326 music and arts teachers for one year
• 132,716,897 one-year scholarships for university students
• Pell Grants ($5,550 each) for 188,536,667 university students
• 8,139,680 affordable housing units
• health care for one year for 461,193,337 children
• Head Start placements for 143,595,239 children for one year
• 17,188,969 elementary school teachers for one year
• 1,083,271,391 homes with renewable electricity for one year

(Note that each of those items costs around $1.05 trillion; unfortunately, we couldn't get all of them for that same amount.)

A few other things we could have gotten for $1.05 trillion, off the top of my head:

• a balanced budget;
• 105 years' worth of funding for basic research at the National Science Foundation at $10 billion per year, the level NSF's budget is projected to reach at the end of the current doubling process--in 2017;
• 33 years' worth of funding for health research at the National Institutes of Health, at current funding levels;
• 52.5 years' worth of NASA funding at its projected FY2011 level of $20 billion;
• 6 months' worth of free health care for everyone in the United States, assuming no economies of scale or other savings would be realized from a single-payer system, based on total costs in 2008;
• a year's worth of HIV medication for two-thirds of the approximately 30 million people infected with HIV worldwide, assuming $50,000 per person per year

It's long past time to end these senseless wastes of our national time, talent, and treasure. If for no other reason than that we can no longer afford them.

And then there was one

Le Monde is reporting that one of the last two surviving French veterans of World War I has died:

Louis de Cazenave, l'un des deux derniers poilus de la première guerre mondiale, est décédé, dimanche 20 janvier, à l'âge de 110 ans, a annoncé le ministère des anciens combattants. L'information a ensuite été confirmée par son fils à l'antenne de France Info. M. de Cazenave est mort dans la matinée à son domicile de Brioude, dans la Haute-Loire. Il sera inhumé mardi.

Louis de Cazenave, one of the last two poilus of the First World War, died Sunday, 20 January, at the age of 110 years, announced the Minister of Former Soldiers. The information was later confirmed by his son on France Info. M. de Cazenave died in the morning at his home in Brioude, in the Haute-Loire. He will be buried on Tuesday.

The story goes on to say that de Cazenave was the eldest of the surviving French veterans, born almost two months earlier than the last remaining veteran, a Mr. Lazare Ponticelli. De Cazenave joined a Senegalese colonial regiment in 1916 and fought with it until September 1917, taking part in the Second Battle of the Aisne, along the "Chemin des Dames," where ultimately nearly 100,000 French soldiers gave their lives in the course of nine days, nearly half of those casualties coming on the first day of the battle.

I must confess to being a little torn by the sentiments expressed by MM de Cazenave and Ponticelli against the idea of a state funeral for the last of the poilus. I doubt their fallen comrades would think it presumptuous of them--and it would make some small amends for the generally shabby way that WWI veterans were often treated when they came back home--particularly if they were wounded or handicapped. (And, as the final sentences of the linked article from Le Monde make clear, huge numbers of them were: WWI claimed a total of 9 million dead, all told, and 20 million wounded--half of whom were disfigured.) On the other hand, it's entirely in character that they should refuse the honor due them.

Sadder still than this death is the fact that hardly anyone remembers the Great War, the war that was supposed to end all wars, anymore. Its brutality, futility, and senseless slaughter were superseded by those of the war that followed it just a generation later. World War II and its veterans have become somewhat iconic in late 20th- and early 21st-century culture. They were the "Greatest Generation," fighting in the last "good" war. And now those veterans, too, are dying off in their thousands each day. It won't be much longer before we won't have any living links to those days, either--a situation we are very likely to encounter with regard to its predecessor war before too many more years pass.

Dona nobis pacem....quam celerrime

Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaks for me:

And this one was just too ironic to pass up. No wonder Abu Gonzalez and his staff did such a lousy job at the Department of Justice: nobody bothered to tell them to bone Latin. It's probably impossible to see at this resolution, but there's a minute inscription above the figures above the door in this shot. It reads Lege atque ordine omnia fiunt, "Let all things be done with law and order."

When do you suppose was the last time they hearkened to that precept?

Lemme 'splain. No, there is too much. Lemme sum up.

By a two-to-one margin (or nearly so), Americans think George W. Bush is doing a lousy job in Iraq. Nearly two-thirds of them say both that Bush has the wrong ideas about how to conduct the war, and think that setting a timetable for pulling out would be a good idea.

Congress, never a terribly popular institution of our government, is nevertheless polling 10 points higher in approval ratings than the pretzelnit is. Both houses of Congress have already voted to either suggest or require that if the pretzelnit wants any more money to carry on his wars, he start thinking about ways to end them fairly quickly.

Yesterday in Najaf and other cities, tens of thousands of Iraqis called for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from their country. And yet Bush expects the Democratic leadership to come to the White House next week to parlay on the supplemental war funding bill, but refuses to budge from his "Give me all the money with no strings attached or else I veto it" tantrum? What's wrong with this picture?

Look, George, I know this Constitution stuff is hard, but try to follow along, mmm-kay? Congress holds the purse strings. They not only decide how much money you get for, well, everything, they also decide just how that money gets spent. If they say you can't spend money without setting a deadline, then you can't spend money without setting a deadline.

Y'see, Congress remembers what you've long since forgotten--if in fact your Uncle Dick and Uncle Karl ever told you about it in the first place--and that's that everybody in the federal government works for the voters. We've made our position on your little war more than clear. In fact, we've been shouting it at the top of our lungs for the last four years straight. We've finally gotten Congress to pay attention, because they're mainly interested in keeping their cushy jobs and even cushier pensions, and they lose all those perks if we send them home early--just like we did to all the Republican incumbents you were counting on to keep control of Congress last year.

Now, we can't send you home in the same way, because the Constitution doesn't allow for recall elections. (And you should be thanking your lucky stars for that!) But we--through our representatives in Congress--can surely make your life even more miserable than it already is for the last two years of your pretzelnicity. So why don't you, for once in your life, suck it up and act like the big man you've always pretended to be? Invite the congressional leaders over for coffee and cookies, and let their people talk to your people about finding a reasonable compromise. You aren't going to get your money without strings, and while we're probably not going to get our one-year timetables for withdrawal, we're really not all that tied to a particular date. We'd just like to have you acknowledge the sad fact that there's no chance we're ever going to win the war--or anything else--in Iraq, and that it's long past time we at least started thinking about how and when to get the hell out of there.

Bluffing on a busted flush

Tom Toles got it about right:

Now if only our nearly naked nudnik weren't playing with real people's lives on the line. And understood the rules of poker.

They can't do the impossible

We all knew this was coming:

President Bush implored lawmakers and the nation last night to give him one more chance to win the war in Iraq and avoid the "nightmare scenario" of defeat while presenting a domestic agenda intended to find common cause with the new Democratic Congress on issues such as energy and immigration.

That sort of dogged persistence in a doomed endeavor was cute when it was just Wil E. Coyote cooking up yet another Acme-assisted cunning plan to catch the Road Runner on the Saturday morning cartoons in my youth. It's another kettle of fish entirely when it's the president of the United States asking for yet another chance to spectacularly bungle the defining issue of his presidency--and at the cost of other people's real blood, toil, tears, and sweat, in the immortal phrase of Sir Winston Churchill.

Let me give it to you straight, Mr. Preznit. There is no chance we will win the war in Iraq. None. Zip. Zero. Nada. Bupkes. Niente. Ничто. That war was lost the moment you gave the go order--and the fault lies entirely with you and your neocon cadre of chickenshit cheerleaders. When you decided to fight this war on the cheap, without demanding that the American people make even the smallest sacrifice to support the war effort, you guaranteed that you or some one of your successors was going to be in the unenviable position of having to stand before the American people and admit that we fucked it up royally.

I feel confident that you will not be that person, given that you seem to have some kind of congenital inability to either recognize or admit your failures. But someone is going to have to do the dirty job, because you have made it impossible for there ever to be a good outcome in Iraq. You can spend every last dime in the Treasury, throw away every last man and woman of military age we've got, and Iraq is still going to be a colossal mess that will take at least a generation to clean up.

All of which begs the question of why we would want to give you one more chance to waste our time, talent, and treasure on a fool's errand that we know is doomed to fail. You brought us this "nightmare scenario of failure" because you were too stupid to recognize that it was staring you in the face. It's time we stopped feeding your addiction and forced you to confront the reality that everyone else in the world recognized long since: Iraq is irretrievably broken, and the best possible course of action right now is for us to get the hell out of there in the hopes that, with the irritant of the Great Satan out of the way, maybe, just maybe, the warring factions will be able to find some way of living together in something reasonably approximating peace. I wouldn't bet on that, either, but it's the best course of action we've got.

Too little, too late

I heard on Auntie Beeb early yesterday morning that details had leaked of the Deciderer's new Iraq strategery: and I damn near fell out of bed laughing when the announcer said that sources indicated that the theme of the preznit's latest "Shit, I gotta find another New Way Out of Eye-Raq" speech was going to be "sacrifice." I didn't shout anything at the radio, though, because I couldn't decide whether it should be "About fucking time, you fatuous git!" or "I do not think that word means what you think it means," in my best Iñigo Montoya accent.

The word "sacrifice" rings exceedingly hollow on the lips of a man born with a silver coke spoon up his nose, a man who has ruthlessly and repeatedly traded upon his name, his wealth, and his powerful political connections to shield himself from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." It is positively blasphemous in the mouth of the man who, having evaded any possibility that he might be called upon to give what Lincoln famously called "the last full measure of devotion" for his country, subsequently lied himself--and the rest of the nation--into an unjust and unjustifiable war: whereupon he told us it was our patriotic duty to go shopping. And subsequently repeated that advice, three years on.

Matthew 24:6

So I woke up this morning to the news that North Korea is denouncing U.N. sanctions imposed on it in the wake of its purported nuclear weapons test last week. According to an AP report in the WaPo:

The North broke two days of silence about the U.N. resolution adopted after its Oct. 9 nuclear test, issuing a Foreign Ministry statement on its official Korean Central News Agency.

"The resolution cannot be construed otherwise than a declaration of a war" against the North, also known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The North warned it "wants peace but is not afraid of war" and that it would "deal merciless blows" against anyone who violates its sovereignty.

It would appear that we must add strategery to the lengthening list of things which the Boy Who Would Be King and the passel of chickenshit chickenhawks who advise him on war and foreign policy folly either don't know or failed to remember. North Korea is already the most isolated nation on the face of the earth. There are tinpot dictatorships in the middle of the African rain forest that have greater access to what we're pleased to call the First World and all that comes from it than do Kim Jong Il and his sorry, downtrodden people.

Now, before the conservacon-artists accuse me of getting all touchy-feely about the sufferings of the poor North Koreans, let me make it perfectly clear that I'm not suggesting we should send over a brigade of clinical psychologists to give them emergency "I'm OK, you're OK" therapy sessions. That would be both pointless and stupid--which would, however, represent a significant improvement over what the Bu$hevik Brigade has been trying, which has been pointless, stupid, dangerous, and almost completely based on wishful thinking instead of hard evidence.

Боже мой

It would appear that God answers Republican prayers after all. Within a day of watching the Decider's popularity nose-diving to another all-time low, and within hours of having yet another shoe drop (itself not long after a different shoe fell; is it me, or does Foleygate have more shoes than Imelda Marcos?) in the Mark Foley scandals, North Korea claims it's joined the nukular club:

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea said Monday it has performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test. The country's official Korean Central News Agency said the test was performed successfully and there was no radioactive leakage from the site.

"The nuclear test is a historic event that brought happiness to the our military and people," KCNA said.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (9:36 p.m. EDT Sunday) in Hwaderi near Kilju city, citing defense officials.

I will not claim that Bush asked Kim Jong Il to do the test at this time, and neither will I claim that this is Karl Rove's much-vaunted "October Surprise." But I can't help but notice that the timing is awfully fucking convenient for the Bu$heviki. Usually, whenever the Boy Who Would Be King's approval ratings tank this badly, they up the FearCon level for a few days and scare enough of the waverers back into the "R" column. I think that trick's been played a few too many times and lost its effectiveness, so it would not surprise me if the Shrubbery had gone looking for a new trick. I just can't prove this was that trick.

But whatever the trick was or might have been, we now have a whole new ball game in Weltpolitik. Thanks entirely to the Decider-in-Chief, the one man on the face of the earth who is demonstrably clearly less sane than George W. Bush now also appears to have nuclear weapons at his disposal. Thanks a lot, boys. I feel so much safer now.

J'accuse!

Shame, shame, shame. If there were, incredibly, any lingering doubts left about just how low John McCain will go if he thinks it will increase his chances of winning the Republican nomination for president, I should think that this compromise bill on the meaning of the Geneva Conventions should go a long way to proving that there are, in fact, no depths Senator McCain will not plumb, and no principles he will not speedily abandon, if they gain him even a perceived political advantage.

If anyone should have had the balls of brass to stand foursquare against the use of torture in any circumstance, it should have been McCain, who knows from first-hand experience exactly what torture is like. And then there's the fact that he and Colin Powell and Lindsey Graham and the other opponents of the White House's imperialist fantasy were absolutely, 100% within the right. They should have had the courage of their convictions and stuck to their guns.

They did not. And unless we can inject some stiffness into an awful lot of Democratic spines, I'm afraid that our side will not, either. And that would be a truly awful outcome.