The U.S. bill for rebuilding Iraq and maintaining security there is widely expected to exceed the war's price tag, but the Bush administration is offering only hazy details about the multibillion-dollar totals.
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I know the numbers are still "hazy" at this point (perhaps deliberately so) but I truly think it's time for economists to start taking the occupation of Iraq - along wih all the other hyper militarist actions underway - into account in their estimations of the present health and future prospects of the US economy.
Even if resistance and sabotage and all the rest of the violent reaction to the US presence were to abate today or tommorow it would be a huge pricetag (how could it not be?).
But resistance isn't going to stop and the costs are going to mount.
This is huge. Even those of us who oppose it tend, I think, to downplay the significance of the invasion/occupation in some ways (just another terrible example of imperialism, etc). But there is no friggin way the US is going to get out of this without some major damage - an analog of the damage done to the 'liberated'.
Sometimes I feel like a complete jackhole for wondering about employment prospects and trends like offshoring while this tremendous elephant is sitting in the room staring at me. Beyond our immediate criticisms, the invasion/occupation of Iraq means something of very longterm importance to our national future.
The Afghan invasion and lengthy guerilla war contributed to the collapse of the USSR we're told.
I don't know what the endpoint of the Iraq invasion will be but it's surely not going to be a soft landing.
DRM
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