I don’t remember which comedian I heard years ago suggesting it would be cheaper for the U.S. to simply buy Iraq instead of invade it, but it was a telling point - since the invasion in 2003 the U.S. has ‘owned’ Iraq. This was recognized by some even in the first weeks of the invasion - the Bush Administration planned to rob Iraq, not reconstruct it.
So, beyond thousands of American lives lost, untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives lost, and misery beyond calculation (in the U.S. and Iraq), how much has the Iraq War cost the United States? The Iraq war and occupation has already cost America about $567 billion.
But President Bush believes we should be in Iraq for a very long, long time. Now we have an estimate of what a long-term occupation of Iraq will cost in money - trillions of dollars.
Just imagine what that money combined with an alternative energy not directed at Iraq, could do. Here’s some help - read Matt Yglesias’ article from over a year ago to gain perspective on our waste of money - and the alternatives. We could do so much better. We really could.
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