Unaffordable
by digby
Fred Barnes just said that it’s not true that the joint chiefs unanimously oppose an escalation of the war — it’s that they are afraid Bush won’t send enough troops to get the job done and that if it’s a temporary escalation, the whole place will fall apart after we pull those troops back out.
He didn’t think those were important differences of opinion, naturally, because he has once again cast his lot with Junior, but really, these are huge and serious concerns.
It’s clear that Bush is listening to these armchair Neopoleons because they are saying that he can “win” if he just sends in a few more troops for a few months and claps louder. And his generals are all saying that the only way he can “win” is with a massive new army that stays in Iraq forever. That is the reality based choice for “winning.” Period. And it isn’t going to happen because 70% of the country have wised up to the fact that this pony hunt is making the country less safe and it’s costing us our future.
According to the WaPo this afternoon:
In an interview with The Washington Post, Bush said he has instructed newly sworn-in Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to report back to him with a plan to increase ground forces. The president gave no estimates about how many troops may be added but indicated that he agreed with suggestions in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill that the current military is stretched too thin to cope with the demands placed on it.
[…]
The Army has already temporarily increased its size from 482,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 to 507,000 today and soon to 512,000. But the Army wants to make that 30,000-soldier increase permanent and then grow an additional 7,000 soldiers or more per year. The Army estimates that every 10,000 additional soldiers will cost about $1.2 billion a year.
That is on top of this:
The Defense Department has requested $99.7 billion more in emergency funding for Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terrorism that, if approved, would bring war spending in fiscal 2007 to a record $170 billion.
The request is in a 17-page memo approved Dec. 7 by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England that is under review at the White House. About half the new money — $48 billion — would go to the Army, which says its costs have risen sharply as fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan drags on and more equipment is destroyed or damaged.
The request, added to the $70 billion that Congress approved in September, is 45 percent higher than the $117 billion in supplemental funding approved last year. It reflects an earlier England memo telling the services they could include expenses they considered related to the global war on terror even if not strictly to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Do the American people really want to continue to mortgage their own future and their children’s futures so that George W. Bush can save face? Because that’s what this escalation is all about. Every penny that’s spent on this not only prolongs our involvement in this misbegotten war, exacerbating the horror for the Iraqis and robbing Americans of money that is desperately needed for other things.
Like this, for instance:
Reports of homicides, assaults and other violent offenses surged by nearly 4 percent in the first six months of the year compared with the same time period in 2005, according to the FBI’s latest Uniform Crime Report. The numbers included an increase of nearly 10 percent for robberies, which many criminologists consider a leading indicator of coming trends.
The results follow a 2.5 percent jump in violent crime for 2005, which at the time represented the largest increase in 15 years.
[…]
The numbers come amid heightened criticism of the federal government from many police chiefs and state law enforcement officials, who complain that the Bush administration has retreated from fighting traditional crime in favor of combating terrorism and protecting homeland security. Justice officials dispute those contentions and pointed yesterday to an ongoing study designed to identify solutions to the rise in violent crime.
Bush has not retreated from fighting crime in favor of combatting terrorism. He’s retreated from fighting traditional crime in favor of burnishing the Republicans’ national security image and kicking back taxpayer money to his cronies. We are not safer from terrorism and our entire society is starting to fray around the edges because of inattention to fundamentals, resulting in wage stagnation, health care insecurity, higher crime, crumbling infrastructure, a broken military and failing education.
The Iraq money pit has made things worse for everyone — Iraqis and Americans alike. None of us can afford an escalation of this surreal pony war.
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