The Moderate Liberal

The Bush administration is on a campaign to convince that the surge is working, and that success is at hand in Iraq.

I say, Bravo!

After a trillion dollars spent and more than 3,000 military lives lost and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, the American and Iraqi peoples dearly deserve some success.  And now brutal sectarian killings and violence in Iraq seem to have dropped from Unfathomable to just plain horrible.

The adminstration doesn’t get off this easy. I’m glad that there is some benefit from surging tens of thousands of American solidiers into the country. Well there should be.

But a year later, where is the political solution that we were promised?  Remember? The political solution that the surge would allow for?

Let us hope that a political solution is soon at hand. Because the military solution is bankrupting our country. 

The Iraqi and American peoples deserve success in Iraq. We have both paid the price.  But let us not allow the Bush Administration to lie to us that his failed strategy has somehow prevailed. If success truly is at hand in Iraq, doubtless it occurred in spite of Bush, not becaus of him.

 Great picture for you today… Click to view. Sorry I can’t embed it here.

A very good article on MSN today regarding the “unfriendly skies.”  It’s about how unbelievably ridiculous some of the airport security measures are, and how billions of dollars may be providing the illusion of “security,” but in reality provides very little.

As we are entering year 7 of this Orwellian post-911 America, we can expect more of this idiocy: full body scanners that can really peek through your clothes, patting down grandma,  allowing lighters and matches in carry-on bags but not in checked luggage, limits on the amount of breastmilk in bottles and juice in sippy cups, long long lines at airports — all of this hassle, billions of dollars, and net effect is simply the illusion of being safe. 

I’m glad to say that on at least three occassions this year, I said no to air travel.  I drove twice, and just didn’t go on the 3rd trip.  Screw the airlines, the airports, long lines and all of the hassles that go with it.  In my heyday as a jetsetter I once held “gold” status on Northwest Airlines. But today, I take pride in creatively avoiding the need to travel.  This summer we took a houseboat vacation closer to home, rather than fly to Colorado to go biking.  Next year we’ll go to Colorado, but plan to allocate a couple of extra days for car travel.

Cost is not the issue, and with a little planning, time can be easily managed.

Until some joy is brought back to air travel, I intend to do whatever I can to avoid it.

LA Times reports an argument that the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could balloon to $3.5 trillion over the next decade because of such “hidden” costs as oil market disruptions, forgone investments, long-term healthcare for veterans and interest payments on borrowed war funding, according to a report released by congressional Democrats on Tuesday. 

While the White House poo-poo’s the report the truth is, the cost will be much higher than this.  There are already 3,000 Americans dead and 30,000 wounded.  While we can estimate the costs of benefits (if you can get them) for the bereaved and the cost of caring for the wounded, what about the loss to our own economy: 3,000 fewer healthy Americans who will not pay taxes or contribute to our economy for the next 30 to 40 years.  How do you quantify the tremendous psychological and societal damage being done to our society, such as the cost to America incurred when a few returning veterans “go postal. 

The opportunity cost to America is horrendous: what about the $3.5 Trillion dollars that we will NOT use to ween our economy off of oil by building out alternative and renewable fuels. America’s progress in this area has been set back many years.

$3.5 trillion dollars for this war is just the start.  It is as Osama Bin Laden probably calculated when he provoked a predictable Bush into a rage: America will have an extremely difficult time recovering from Bush’s mismanagement of American affairs, if it can recover at all.