“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you”™re talking real money,” U.S. Sen. Everett M. Dirksen, R-Illinois, is said to have told oil man H.L. Hunt during hearings in the early 1960s. Without diminishing the human costs of our Iraq involvement, the sentiment is appropriate to the economics of this war.
In the cold, unforgiving gaze of the economist, you and I every day are working to raise those billions. It might appear mercenary to some to talk about the war this way when American and Iraqi blood is running in the gutters of Baghdad. We acknowledge our questionable tact, but insist the questions are worth asking because the meter is running at a cosmological clip. Who can wrap his or her mind around the term “trillion-dollar war?” That”™s Carl Sagan terrain.
We realize this isn”™t the typical subject for our news pages, but it warrants a hard look both from us and from you. We have all wondered in frivolous moments how we might stack up as history closed its vise. The combat veterans and the conscientious objectors among us know the answer. The rest of us drift to other thoughts with the luck o”™ the Irish, grateful to have been spared calls to fix bayonets or to stanch bleeding that will not be stanched.
Yet by filing those quarterly tax forms, by paying that bill April 15, you are a major part of the errant equation called Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Quaint notion; already forgotten.)
Our national treasure is being sucked into the Iraq vortex and, carve these words in stone, it ain”™t coming back.
Will you squirm when youths in the year 2030 ask, “What did you do during the Iraq war?” Not a sane and sober soul among us wants to answer that question: “I never missed ”˜American Idol”™ on Fox.”
But that”™s the reality: “I”™m paying my taxes. Let the politicians figure it out. Now hush up ”“ Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell are about to go at it.”
You”™ve heard the numbers. A trillion-dollar war. The Congressional Budget Office says $9 billion per month. Sen. Dirksen would say that”™s real money.
“Every American must pay attention,” said Farrokh Hormozi, a professor of economics and public policy at Pace University in White Plains.
“The economic cost is huge,” he said, noting the $400 billion spent so far doesn”™t include indirect costs like long-term care for injured and traumatized vets. “The fact is that this war is lost. We are nowhere near what the expectation was.”
It is no small factor that President Bush never served his country except to defend the skies, briefly, between Texas and Oklahoma and that Vice President Cheney had other priorities (like dodging the draft) during the Vietnam War. Both are clearly out of their depth on military matters, despite Cheney”™s alleged defense acumen gleaned in the 1970s.
But they are not out of their depth on matters of oil. The president and vice president are oil men and this war is about oil, meaning it”™s about keeping the American economy hooked to an oily intravenous line. Closing in on seven years in office, there is no Manhattan Project for energy independence. Frankly, Exxon-Mobil wouldn”™t stand for it. Remember Kenny-Boy Lay of Enron? Good friend of the administration. Convict and creep to everyone else. Before his death, he helped craft our energy policy. Feeling safer?
It was Republican Sen. Robert Dole of Kansas who chided the administration of President George H.W. Bush about fighting a war over three letters: “O. I. L.” Sen. Dole, we need a dose of your Kansas common sense today.
It is patently clear the line between insurgent and civilian in the middle of a three-way civil war is very, very blurry. But we want cheap gas, dammit! To paraphrase Joseph Conrad: “The shame. The shame.”
The subtext of those outraged letters to the editor about costly gas and curses at the gas pump is: I don”™t care what the military”™s doing today, just give me $2 gas again. And be quick about it ”“ ”˜American Idol”™ is on.”
Since our bailiwick is business, we think it appropriate to ask the business community to emerge from its studied silence on the war. We know many business people tilt Republican, at least on matters of taxes and financial responsibility. No complaints there. But business people also tend to be smart and this war just does not make any sense. When it”™s time to say “dammit,” make sure it”™s preceded by, “Peace now.”
Everett Dirksen (1896-1969) himself found his billion-dollar sentiment amusing. The Dirksen Congressional Center notes there is no tape of the actual comment, although Dirksen often used variations on the theme. Via a second-hand account, he even said he was misquoted but liked the mistake so much he let it ride. We offer no such bemused reflections on the current Iraq fiasco.
Maureen Morgan, a local transit advocate and columnist who writes about energy issues for Hudson Valley Business, said. “As long as Al Gore is still a joke among some business people, and we refuse to acknowledge our dependence on foreign oil, we will be in Iraq. Few people accept the reality of why we are there in the first place. It”™s a head-in-the-sand, as it were, scenario. It may be the fatal flaw that actually undoes this country.”
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