On October 10, 2002, the anniversary of the day when the U.S. House of Representatives voted to endorse the Bush administration's proposed war against Iraq, United for Peace and Justice will be doing a call-in day to say NO on $87 billion for the occupation (more than the total federal discretionary spending for education, job training, and employment and social services in the USA, according to the New York Times editorial on September 10, 2003). Activists should organize actions that highlight the costs of the occupation of Iraq, in terms of financial burdens and sacrifice of lives, and link them to unemployment, social program cuts, and other domestic economic problems that oppress American workers.
Here's a good article about the financial costs of the occupation:
***** The New York Times September 9, 2003, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 12; Column 1; Foreign Desk LENGTH: 923 words HEADLINE: THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: U.S. BUDGET; 78% of Bush's Postwar Spending Plan Is for Military BYLINE: By RICHARD W. STEVENSON DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Sept. 8
BODY: President Bush's $87 billion request for postwar costs is heavily weighted to maintaining military operations, with $65.5 billion directed to the armed forces, $15 billion toward rebuilding Iraq and $5 billion toward building its security forces, and $800 million to new spending for civilian programs in Afghanistan, administration officials said today.
The $87 billion price tag makes the package the most expensive postwar military and civilian effort since the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, after adjusting for inflation. Combined with the earlier $79 billion approved by Congress to conduct the war and pay initial postwar expenses, it would bring the cost to the United States of deposing Saddam Hussein and stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan this year and next to $166 billion. That is more than 25 times the $6.4 billion bill to American taxpayers, in today's dollars, for the Persian Gulf war in 1991 to expel Iraq from Kuwait.
Most of the cost of the 1991 conflict -- $60 billion at the time or about $84 billion in today's dollars -- was picked up by allies, including Saudi Arabia and Japan.
This time around, administration officials said, their main financial goal is to squeeze donations from other countries toward the difference between the $15 billion the United States plans to put toward physical reconstruction of Iraq and the total cost, which the White House put at $50 billion to $75 billion.
White House officials said Mr. Bush's request, higher than the $60 billion to $70 billion that Congress had expected, should cover all costs for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. But some analysts said the figure might still prove to be low, especially if the United States cannot quell the growing terrorist threat within Iraq.
"This is the beginning of the administration presenting realistically eye-popping numbers to the American people," said Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The number is probably on the low side of what's needed, but we're finally in the realm of realism."
In his speech on Sunday night, Mr. Bush himself compared his plans to rebuild Iraq with the effort after World War II, saying, "America today accepts the challenge of helping Iraq in the same spirit."
His request, though, amounted to an abandonment of a more optimistic plan sketched by administration officials earlier in the year. The administration told Congress in the spring that Iraq's oil revenues would be sufficient to pay the bulk of the postwar costs, which they estimated then would be low.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told a House subcommittee in March that Iraq could generate $50 billion to $100 billion of oil revenue over the next two to three years. "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon," Mr. Wolfowitz said at the time.
Last spring, when it sought the initial $79 billion for the war, the White House asked for $2.5 billion for reconstruction.
"It is fair to say that the level of decay and underinvestment in the Iraqi infrastructure was worse than almost anyone on the outside anticipated," a senior administration official said today.
Administration officials said they now expect Iraqi oil revenues to increase from zero this year to $12.1 billion next year and $20 billion a year in 2005 and 2006.
The administration's proposal includes $51 billion for military operations in Iraq and $11 billion for military operations in Afghanistan. The military money for Iraq would include $800 million to help cover the costs incurred by other nations that agree to send troops to a multinational division, as well as $300 million to buy more body armor and armored vehicles for American troops, who have been subject to regular bombing and sniper attacks.
In addition to seeking $15 billion for reconstruction in Iraq, the proposal calls for $5 billion to be put toward building up Iraqi security forces, including an Iraqi Army, a police force and a border and customs agency.
In many ways, the $87 billion figure was the most compelling evidence yet of how Mr. Bush, who campaigned in 2000 against taking on such jobs, has reversed course to take on a more ambitious role in remaking parts of the world than any president since Harry S. Truman.
From 1948 until 1952, the United States spent just under $13 billion on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, an amount equivalent to about $100 billion today. The parallels to the spending request for Iraq are not exact, because the United States was also spending considerable amounts after World War II to maintain a large military presence in Europe and square off against the Soviet Union in the cold war.
But the White House's overall estimate of $50 billion to $75 billion in civilian reconstruction costs for Iraq, much of which the United States expects to come from other countries, makes clear that the job in Iraq is one of huge scale. At that level, it would be on a par in today's dollars with the reconstruction costs shouldered by the United States for Britain, France and Germany under the Marshall Plan.
To put the request into a different kind of perspective, the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group, said $87 billion is roughly equivalent to two years of unemployment benefits, 87 times what the federal government spends on after-school programs and more than 10 times the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency.
GRAPHIC: Photo: Reconstruction in Iraq would include work like the rebuilding of a shattered school last month in Diwaniyah. (Photo by Joao Silva for The New York Times)
Chart: "ADDING IT UP: The Costs of War and Its Aftermath" President Bush says he will request an additional $87 billion for military operations and reconstruction efforts.
What Is Included in the $87 Billion
Military operations: $65.5 billion $51 billion for Iraq and $11 billion for Afghanistan The overall $65.5 billion figure includes: $32.3 billion for "operating tempo," or the pace of the operation in terms of equipment usage $18.5 billion in military personnel costs $1.9 billion for new and replacement equipment
Iraq reconstruction: $20.3 billion
$5 billion for security, including: $2.1 billion for the new Iraqi Army and civilian defense corps $2.1 billion for border enforcement, police, fire and customs
$15 billion for infrastructure, including:
$6.0 billion for electric power $3.7 billion for water and sewage $2.1 billion for oil $0.8 billion for transportation and communications $0.5 billion for housing, public buildings, roads and bridges
Afghanistan reconstruction: $800 million
Putting the Amount in Context
Federal budget
The $87 billion is equivalent to: 4 percent of the entire proposed budget for the 2004 fiscal year 11 percent of proposed discretionary spending 20 percent of nonmilitary discretionary spending 163 percent of discretionary spending on education
Wars and post-conflict efforts
Marshall Plan: $100 billion Postwar Japan: $19 billion World War II: $4.9 trillion Vietnam: $600 billion 1991 Gulf war: $84 billion U.S. share: $6.4 billion Kosovo (to date): $9 billion
Figures are approximate and adjusted for inflation
(Sources by White House; Congressional Research Service; Coalition Provisional Authority and Defense Department documents provided by Congressional sources) *****
Also, here's a nice Paul Krugman soundbite:
***** The New York Times September 14, 2003, Sunday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 6; Page 54; Column 1; Magazine Desk LENGTH: 7075 words HEADLINE: The Tax-Cut Con BYLINE: By Paul Krugman; Paul Krugman is a Times columnist and a professor at Princeton. His new book is "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century."
. . . Right now, much of the public discussion of the Bush tax cuts focuses on their short-run impact. Critics say that the 2.7 million jobs lost since March 2001 prove that the administration's policies have failed, while the administration says that things would have been even worse without the tax cuts and that a solid recovery is just around the corner.
But this is the wrong debate. Even in the short run, the right question to ask isn't whether the tax cuts were better than nothing; they probably were. The right question is whether some other economic-stimulus plan could have achieved better results at a lower budget cost. And it is hard to deny that, on a jobs-per-dollar basis, the Bush tax cuts have been extremely ineffective. According to the Congressional Budget Office, half of this year's $400 billion budget deficit is due to Bush tax cuts. Now $200 billion is a lot of money; it is equivalent to the salaries of four million average workers. Even the administration doesn't claim its policies have created four million jobs. Surely some other policy -- aid to state and local governments, tax breaks for the poor and middle class rather than the rich, maybe even W.P.A.-style public works -- would have been more successful at getting the country back to work. . . . *****
>one sister is out of work and trying to collect -- and more
>importantly: they all have young sons and daughters - who for now
>are not in the military, but are tempted by the money, glory and
>future benefits as a vet.
It is reported in the New York Times that re-enlistment rates have slumped -- that's good news. I hope that economically desperate working-class kids who are thinking about joining the military right now won't have to learn the hard way:
***** The New York Times September 12, 2003, Friday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk LENGTH: 1841 words HEADLINE: THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: WITH THE THIRD DIVISION; Returning From Iraq War Not So Simple for Soldiers BYLINE: By STEVEN LEE MYERS DATELINE: FORT STEWART, Ga., Sept. 9
. . . What lasting effects the war had on the First Brigade's soldiers -- on re-enlistment rates, which have slumped, on broken bodies and on battered psyches -- remains to be seen.
Sergeant [Kenneth N.] Bortz [from St. Mary's, Ga.] said fighting in Iraq made him rethink a career in the Army.
"I feel good for what I did, but out there, that's when you really think about what you want," he said on Friday. "And in Baghdad, I knew the Army wasn't for me."
Sgt. Jamie A. Betancourt, also in the Second Battalion, plans to get out when his enlistment is up in May for a simple reason. "There's nowhere else I can go in the Army," he said, "that's not going back over there."
Others have no choice.
In June, when the brigade's soldiers were living in steaming squalor at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, known among troops as Hotel Hell, Staff Sgt. Ray B. Robinson complained about staying on in Baghdad without a clear purpose.
The brigade had turned over its responsibilities for security but remained in reserve, still vulnerable to attacks, but not aggressively pursuing the attackers.
He compared the situation to the carnival game of shooting ducks. "I was the duck," he said.
On July 8, his squad had been assigned to patrol Route 8, the highway to and from the airport west of Baghdad. He spotted an orange-and-white taxi across the highway and two Iraqis walking away from it. He lurched his Humvee to the left, drove onto the median strip and ran over a mine.
The force of the blast blew him through the windshield. "Fox said I was dead," he said of initial television reports, but -- he woke in the mine's crater, both his feet shattered, his legs torn by shrapnel, his face and arm scorched, his left eardrum broken.
He has endured two operations and faces more. The doctors saved his feet, but he is not likely to walk normally again. After 16 years in the Army and the National Guard, his career is over. . . . *****
At 8:15 AM -0400 9/19/03, Jose Rodriguez & Sally Everson wrote:
>For this reason, I think the "Bring the Troops Home Now" campaign
>has the best chances of ending the Iraqi occupation, rather than
>trying to go for popular appeal - the people on those polls seem
>clueless to me. In fact -- does anyone know where I can get a bumper
>sticker on bring the troops home, now?
United for Peace and Justice has been selling stickers that say, Bush Lies Who Dies? End the Occupation of Iraq Bring the Troops Home NOW! <http://www.unitedforpeace.org/>
I'll look for Spanish stickers. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>