10-14-05, 9:25 am
Describing the continuing US occupation of Iraq as a 'quagmire,' a recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies elaborated on the massive cost in lives and resources for the war in Iraq. From tens of thousands dead on both sides to hundreds of billions spent, Americans from all walks of life are starting to ask the hard question: is it worth it?
According to IPS, in addition to the nearly 2,000 US troops killed, well over 14,000 have been wounded, with 96 percent of that number coming after President Bush's May 1, 2003 declaration of the end of the war. Additionally, over 200 non-US troops (mainly British), 255 civilian contractors (at least 91 US), and 66 media workers (11 at the hands of the US military) have been killed in the war zone.
Media and government report analysis done by says as many as 30,000 Iraqis have been reported killed during the war. This estimate is far lower than the estimate provided by British medical journal The Lancet, which in October 2004 estimated that as many as 98,000 Iraqis were killed during fighting up to that point in the war.
Up to 120,000 Iraqi civilians have been wounded, reports The Project for Defense Alternatives. As many as 6,000 Iraqi military and police have been killed, and the monthly death toll due to fighting and terrorist attacks has averaged 155 per month in 2005, up form 65 last year.
IPS also cites a UN report that numbered the people who have suffered ill health affects directly due to war at nearly a quarter of a million.
Security in Iraq continues to be a major problem. The Pentagon claims that it has killed or captured between 40,000 and 50,000 insurgents, but military intelligence estimates say that the insurgency as more than tripled in size since November 2003 with as many as 200,000 non-fighting sympathizers.
There is little doubt that the stated goals of the war have not materialized, that violence aimed at US targets has grown, and that violence aimed at non-US and non-military targets has also grown. According to IPS, the US government's own calculations of the number of terrorist attacks in Iraq grew nine-fold between 2003 and 2004. Worldwide, over the same period, terrorist incidents grew three times, from 175 to 655 incidents.
Another alarming element of the human cost of war has been the direct assault on human rights by the Bush administration. The Justice Department circulated a memo in March 2003 assuring the White House that torture was legal and that US military personnel were not required to abide by international conventions banning torture. This document opened up a period during which prisoner interrogation methods endorsed at the highest levels of the administration were implemented that have since been ruled to violate international law.
Discovery of photos depicting the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners along with evidence compiled by numerous human rights groups showed that the administration had systematically violated international agreements banning torture and mistreatment. As IPS points out, the blatant violations of these agreements and principles virtually guarantee that other countries in the future will violate them with impunity.
Adverse environmental fallout has also resulted. Toxic chemical waste, unexploded ordinance, exploded ordinance, depleted uranium rounds (used in almost every projectile fired by the US military), and so on have scarred the landscape and damaged the regional ecosystem for decades perhaps centuries to come.
But damage has not been confined to Iraq, reports IPS. About 48,000 National Guard and Reserve personnel are in Iraq. The deployment of these forces has cut deeply into the availability of first responders, police, fire fighters, and other emergency medical teams needed to aid in the event of natural disasters, forest fires, and other major catastrophes.
Some emergency experts have suggested that the disaster after hurricane Katrina could have been alleviated if the several thousand Gulf States National Guard troops had not been deployed to Iraq.
IPS estimates that financially, the war in Iraq alone has cost $727 for every man woman and child in the US. The Congressional Budget Office also recently estimated that maintaining the current level of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan alone will double the annual federal budget deficit over the next ten years.
Growing deficits have caused many lawmakers to find other cuts to offset the economic cost of war. The Bush administration specifically has taken aim at gutting many federal programs, some of which working families rely on for assistance in times of economic hardship, and ordinary services like public schools, health care, public transportation, infrastructure, and more. The administration has also targeted Veterans' Administration funding for deep cuts.
The National Priorities Project, for example, estimates that the money spent on the war so far could have provided important social services. The money could have paid for health care for over 46 million uninsured people, 3.5 million elementary school teachers, or 27 million spots in Head Start programs, almost 2 million affordable housing units, 24,072 new elementary schools, 40 million university scholarships, or over 3 million port container inspectors.
Other important costs of this war, argues IPS, have been less tangible but no less crucial. The Bush administration’s manipulation of intelligence to pressure Congress to vote for a resolution authorizing the president to use military force and to build public support for his effort have deeply erode US credibility at home and abroad.
Other abstract Bush administration doctrines with real world consequences such as the right of 'preemptive war' have circumvented international law, claiming the right to attack any country deemed a threat and further eroding the notion of collective security embodied in the UN Charter and other agreements to which the US is a signatory.
Carrying out the invasion of Iraq in the name of the so-called war on terror has not produced increased multilateral support for the specific policies of the United States regarding combating terrorism. If anything, worldwide opinion of the US has become more negative, even outright hostile. The reputation of the US for decades may be in jeopardy.
The thrust of the IPS report is that the American public can no longer afford the war on Iraq. It is a political, economic, social, and human failure. Insisting that it must continue for any reason will only add to the miserable cost without positive result. Terror and security are at stake in this war, but not in the way the President and the congressional Republicans imagine. Our security and a step toward eliminating terrorism depend directly on how quickly US military forces can leave.
--Reach Joel Wendland at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
