Hit McBush On His $3 Trillion War

by Steve Soto

Hillary or Obama cannot bury McBush on Iraq until they link the war's geopolitical impacts to its harm upon our economy. Our sons and daughters are still dying in Iraq, but the White House and the media have moved the story off the front pages and replaced the narrative with a “the surge worked” storyline. Democrats have enabled this to happen by not highlighting the cost of this war and the easy willingness of this administration to pass the war and its costs onto the next president and future generations, and are just now pointing out McBush’s willingness to stay forever. Whenever Bush or McCain smear Democrats for being irresponsible on Iraq, Hillary and Obama need to hit back by asking how irresponsible was Tora Bora, a war of choice against the wrong enemy with underequipped and undermanned forces, and a war financed with $3 trillion in debt.

Hillary had the correct formulation last week when she said we needed to get out of Iraq and return to the fields of Afghanistan to finish the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Obama has been saying the same thing. Yet neither of them brings up the cost issue enough, which is the one way to get everyday voters to pay attention. Former Clinton advisor and Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz penned a Post op-ed yesterday wherein he placed the eventual cost of this war at $3 trillion, a staggering sum that combined with the rest of Bush’s negligent economic and energy policies frankly dooms this country to banana republic status for decades unless we change course. Stiglitz’ new book, penned with Linda Bilmes is now out and available through a link on the left column of the blog’s front page. It lays out in detail how this became a $3 trillion war, and what that expenditure does to the rest of our economy and our needs.

I do not think it was random chance that this became a $3 trillion war, because I now think Bush/Cheney came into office determined to turn Clinton’s surpluses away from a Social Security lockbox and eventual payoff of our debt, and into upper bracket tax cuts and a deficit-financed war and disaster capitalism economy, whereby the new spiraling deficits could then be the casus belli for eviscerating Medicare, Social Security, and much of the rest of the safety net in this country.

McBush is already selling an agenda that doesn't add up to his Kool-Aid drinking base, one where strict budget discipline is needed to maintain the Bush tax cuts (he previously opposed), cut Social Security and Medicare, and finance a 100-year war. It is well past time for Hillary and Obama to hammer Bush and McCain for the war’s $3 trillion cost and the GOP’s grand plan to spend away the surpluses and create deficits to finance war, tax cuts for the wealthy, and disaster capitalism for GOP contributors, while ingoring unmet needs here at home and cutting Social Security and other critical domestic programs.