Why should we spend billions to rebuild countries whom we defeat in war?

Question

Yesterday President Bush requested another 1.2 Billion dollars to rebuild Iraq. We have rebuilt Germany, Japan, Italy, and other countries after defeating them in war, none of whom repaid the costs of rebuilding nor stand by us in the latest war. Japan and Germany have equaled or surpassed us economically! The old book, The Mouse that Roared, comes to mind. In my view if we left countires we go to war with in the stone age, others would hesitate to provoke us. Seems to me we could spend the money here in America improving our daily lives, and if its the oil, hell just take the oil, and go home. Everyone thinks we're the bad guy anyway.

Answer 1

Why not take our troops out of Iraq have them rebuild New Orleans and the other hurricane damaged areas along the gulf coast and pay them with that money. I guarantee there would be less soldiers being killed.

Answer 2

First of all, there isn't an economy on earth that can match us, the U.S.A. Which economy on earth can spend 200 billion dollars a year (for five years now) on a war, spend hundreds of billions of dollars on hurricane relief funds, spend billions on helping the defeated countries that you've mentioned to rebuild, and other millions and billions of dollars in generosity to those less fortunate and still have a rapidly growing economy and a 4.5% natioanal average of unemployment (which is the same percentage under clinton).
As far as your initial question is concerned, why do we rebuild, i think that it stems back to the roman days, when conquered people were assimilated into the roman society. Those people had a governor from Rome presiding over them. This Governor would make sure that the people, the language, the buildings etc reflected Rome. This system, was done by other empires after the Roman empire, like England. The british too would conquer lands and appoint them governors to enure the colonies reflected the crown...so too with the USA...

Answer 3

We do so in order to prevent a second war from occurring. When the First World War occurred, everyone said that it would be 'The War to End All Wars,' as what person would willing start a conflict after all of that? The problem was that all of the 'Winners' of the war wanted the 'Losers', primarily Germany, to pay all the costs of the war. Thus, the people of Germany suffered, finding it hard to rebuild. This lead to a country of malcontents, which allowed Hitler to rise to power. 'The War to End All Wars' instead spawned a bloodier conflict, World War II. Thus, we assist countries in rebuilding to hopefully stem off future wars. After World War II we helped Japan's economy, and now have a strong trading partner with them. Much better than fearing the rise of a dictator.

Answer 4

We rebuild countries we defeat in war because if we *don't* it tends to come back to bite us in the butt. We haven't rebuilt every country we've defeated. Particularly during the Cold War we overturned dozens of stable governments because they were too friendly with the communists, and many of them we left in complete shambles one way or another.

A few decades ago, the Soviet Union was moving towards Afghanistan. Afghanistan resisted. We provided military training and weapons to the resistance, known as the Freedom Fighters. They fought our battle for us, and they won. Then we left. Most of the country's infrastructure had been destroyed, and they were essentially blasted back to the stone age. We also left them with a very large population of unemployed soldiers; a population of young men with American military training and weapons who had no other skills, and no identity except as soldiers. And out of the ruins of the Freedom Fighters can Al Queida. In that case, we were even on their side in the war, but leaving them in ruins like that still made them hate us, and it certain did come back to bite us.

Leaving countries in ruins doesn't increase the fear of our nation, it increases the hatred towards us. Not only from the countries we destroy, but also from their allies, and from anyone who can identify with their predicament. Maybe we'll scare all those scare little peanut size countries into submission (you know, the ones that can't even get missiles over here?), but what about the enemies we can't bomb. Show me Al Queida on a map. Where do we bomb to blast *them* back to the stone age? The more of the world that sees us as a bully, the more enemies we'll have, including the kind of enemy we can't just bomb and be done with.

Also, we're fighting a war with the government, the military, and any unofficial resistance movements. We're not fighting the civilians. It's generally considered polite to make an effort to avoid killing innocent civilians in battle. If the infrastructure is destroyed, the civilians suffer. Countless civilians die from preventable disease, and even those that survive have a greatly reduced quality of life. When you're fighting a war, it's bad manners not to make an effort to minimize the harm to the civilian population, including that harm that occurs after the war is over.

Finally, the current justification for being there at all is that Saddam was a bad guy who was abusing his citizens. If the civilian quality of life when we leave isn't at least as good as it was when we got there, how the hell do we justify being there in the first place? The current administration has to rebuild Iraq (or at least look like they're working on it) for political reasons. Not that I think the war was right, or that I support the current administration, but that's why they're doing it. Wouldn't campaign dollars also be better spent on something that actually helps the American public?

BTW, get your facts straight when you go on political rants - the US still has the largest economy in the world by a huge margin. Japan is second, but they're not even close to catching up to us. I don't remember who's third, but they're not even close to catching Japan, let alone the US. And Japan's economic strength is primarily the result of their own extraordinary efforts to modernize, not our rebuilding efforts.

Answer 5

With all the money that is going to rebuild Iraq, it should be a pretty nice place. Maybe we should all move there. I mean $362 Billion should be able to build quite a nice country, don't you think?

A teacher once told me that it took France (our ally) over twenty years 20 rebuild after WWII. I guess you can still go to some areas which were completely abandoned, due to the severity of the damage. On the other hand, a majority of Germany was rebuilt within 5 years after the war ended. We shouldn't pay to rebuild out enemy, especially before out allies. Nor should we have our soldiers police a civil war.

It's definitely time to leave. We can't hold their hand forever. No one held ours.

Answer 6

Go study Germany and the reparations and sanctions imposed by Europe after WW1. The way the vanquished Germany was treated lead directly to WW2. Building up your former foe into a viable economy and thriving society that is represented by it's government on the other hand has led to such nations as Japan and modern Germany being peaceful world leaders.

EDIT:

Japan and Germany are no where near surpassing us economically, the US leads the world with a $10 TRILLION annual net economy.

The entire EU is getting closer to catching us but that requires 27 countries added together, some of which are more economicly productive than Germany

Answer 7

i dont think we should................... However we always do, any distaster we send money, im sorry but big deal, they can deal with it, Noone sent us money to help the people that died in 9/11 or to rebuild.

We would not be in debt if they would stop sending out our money. AND BRING THE BOYS HOME. This stupid war is costing the US alot of money.

WHO CARES how they have to live its not our problem...... and why would we go to any counrty and TEACH others how to vote........ yeah our voting works so well, thats how Bush got elected in the first place.

ADDITIONAL: Being a good sport you say? Bullshit. And you know it. Its giving our tax dollars to them. We need to leave let them kill themselves then go take over.

The money spent on the war could have been better spent securing our country not waisting it over there. Its our tax dollars and why should we use it on them when we have homeless, needy here in the US.

Clinton may have lied about an affair, however thats really not our business thats between him and his wife. Atleast he was making our national debt smaller. Unlike Bush.

Answer 8

America shouldn't unless there was a Declaration of War signed and a surrender on the opponents part, None of these things transpired in Iraq with the Bush Administration (OPEN ENDED WAR). George Bush wants to make the Iraqi people into Republicans.....Don't you think that's insane and asinine? No wonder Democracy isn't taking hold over there, it's the corrupt playing with the more corrupt.....LOL

Answer 9

It's the right thing to do. Especially in this region. If the US were to pull out with everything still broke, Iran or it's proxy, Hezbullah, would be in here radicalizing everyone like they are currently doing in Lebanon.

Rebuilding a country is just the final phase of a war. People usually only see the kinetic part (killing) but the non-kinetic (not killing) is probably even more important.

Answer 10

I agree with you. Iraq needs to reestablish their oil production & increased revenues so they can finance to rebuild their infrastructure. A lot of the damage is caused by insurgency attacks. Much was done in damaging Iraq's infrastructure by "Shock and Awe", too. We have dropped more tonnage of bombs in Iraq than all of WWII. It's up to Iraq to solve their own internal problems, such as sectarian violence and the religious civil war, build their armies & police forces. We have been rebuilding bridges, schools, stores, mosques to help in this effort, but their government has to do the rest. They don't want us there. The American public doesn't want us there.

Answer 11

This is a very good question. No all situations require the same investment post war. In Iraq, I think it can be argued that after we won the war, we really don't have a need to win the peace.

If muslims insist on killing each other, why should we attempt to pacify them if that results in only draining our resources and when the current situation, is not entirely threatening to our security?

still a question unanswered.

We do know that Hillary wants to blow out of the middle east entirely and send them an apology.