The Cost of War?? How much we pay to the government for this sad reality..............?

Question

Cost

Now let us consider spending. According to Portfolio.com, the combined cost of the Iraq war (Operation Iraqi Freedom, in Pentagon jargon) and its companions, Operation Enduring Freedom, in Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror, could easily top $600 billion this year. But the overall cost is even higher, exceeding perhaps $2 trillion. The annual congressional appropriations for the wars — averaging $127 billion — are bigger than the global markets for soap, heroin, or gambling. And the spending is growing. Monthly spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan averaged $6.8 billion in 2006. That figure is now closer to $8 billion a month.
Portfolio adds:
At that rate of burn, General Electric's value would be wiped out in three and a half years, Bill Gates' personal fortune would evaporate in just seven months, and the troubled Ford Motor Co. would cease to exist in a matter of weeks. If you think of the wars as a giant impulse buy using an unlimited credit card, then paying it off would require coming up with enough cash to match the GDP of three Irelands or about 11 Kuwaits or the Netherlands — but only if you throw in Sri Lanka.
Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Colin Powell warned President Bush that if you break it, you buy it. At last count, we've bought the equivalent of 10 Iraqs with your tax dollars. But instead of buying 10, the money has gone to completely destroying one country.
But surely this money is going to more than just war. What about the effort to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure? Well, if you know anything about government building projects, you know there is not a record of success. Pick any Section-8 housing project anywhere in the country and you will find a long record of mismanagement, misallocation, and waste. So it is in Iraq. These reconstruction projects that war supporters have heralded have amounted to little or nothing.
At the Baghdad airport, for example, your tax dollars paid for $11.8 million in new electrical generators. But $8.6 million worth of them are no longer functioning. The problems with generators in Baghdad are legendary: low oil, broken fuel lines, missing batteries, and the like. The water purification system for the city is no longer working. At the maternity hospital in Erbil, an incinerator for medical waste was padlocked and officials can't find the key. So syringes, bandages, and drug vials are clogging the sewage system and contaminating the water.
Now, how did we get all this information? A federal oversight agency went to inspect a sample of eight projects that US officials in Iraq had declared to be a success. Of these eight successes, seven of them were not actually functioning at all due to plumbing and electrical failure, poor maintenance, looting, and just general neglect. Keep in mind that these are the projects that the US government declared successes! The failures must be abysmal beyond belief.
So too with myriad state programs, among which is the Global War on Terror. There is no standard by which it can be considered a success. But as we know, data only get you so far. If you ask the people who the establishment considers to be experts in terrorism, they are united in one belief: we aren't spending enough money on the effort. Every agency needs more power and money, they say. The reason for the failure is a lack of resources. If we would just fork over more, all will be well.
It is precisely this rationale that led socialism in Russia to last 70 years and drive the entire country into the ground. Those of us who watched this calamity from a distance were astonished that a failure could last so long. Can't the government look around and see what a disaster they have created? Can't they see that while their people were lining up blocks for a scrap of bread and dying at the age of 60, ours were shopping in massive department stores and living to 70 and 75? Why isn't it obvious what a failure socialism has been?
Well, one thing is clear in the social sciences: nothing is obvious to the experts. The reason has to do with their perception of cause and effect. The supporters of socialism always believed that more money and better management would take care of the problem. Every failure was caused by something outside of the system that a perfection of the management system would correct.
So it is with the war on terror. All the experts counsel more spending and power. It never occurs to them that the war itself is the problem. All problems are blamed on some other factor: sectarianism, outside interference, a demagogic new leader, poor management, or what have you. The excuses can be manufactured without end.
And then there is the overwhelming factor that the war on terror can only be considered a failure from the point of view of the stated aims. It is not a failure for those who directly benefit from the increased funding and power. And it is an indisputable fact that the government has benefited massively from the war on terror.
Ludwig von Mises said that the great accomplishment of economists was to draw attention to the extreme limits on the power of government. His point was not merely that government should be limited, but that it is limited by the very structure of reality. It cannot make all people rich by its own initiative. It cannot provide universal housing, literacy, and health. It cannot raise wages across the board. It cannot ban products. Those who seek to accomplish economic ends such as these are choosing the wrong means. That is because there is something more powerful than government: namely economic law.
And what is economic law? It is a force that operates within the structure of all societies everywhere that governs the production and allocation of material resources and time according to strict bounds of what is possible. Some things are just not possible. It just so happens that this includes most of the demands that are made by the public and pressure groups on the government. This was the great discovery of the modern science of economics. This was not known by the ancients. It was not known by the fathers of the early church. It was the discovery of the medieval schoolmen, and the insight was gradually elaborated upon and systematized over the centuries, culminating in the classical and Austrian traditions of thought.
The power of government to do what we desire is strictly limited. Those who do not understand this point do not understand economics. And the economic teaching has a broader implication that concerns the organization of society itself. Government is not free to make and unmake society as it sees fit. It is not a tool we can use to fulfill our private dreams. Society is too complicated, too far reaching, too much a reflection of the free volition of individual actors, for government to be able to accomplish its ends. Most often, what government attempts to do — whether abolish poverty, end liquor consumption, or make all citizens literate and healthy — ends up backfiring and generating the exact opposite.

L.H. Rockwell

Answer 1

Now let's consider the cost of defeat:
Loss of freedom
Loss of liberty
Loss of life
Loss of property
Loss of country

Answer 2

Simply put, is the cost of war too great?
Some people will say no because there is no cap when there is a possibility of defeat. Victory or give me death.
Some people will say yes, enough is enough. Look at how this is affecting personal fortunes and lives, or how it may not affect lives so it must not be important. Justification could go on forever with this choice. The reason for defeat is just as good as any reason. There is no right reason because that may just start another war.

Answer 3

We all know that the dollar is devalued. Example: three years ago if you lived in Canada and you wanted to buy a home in Florida for 750,000 it would cost you 900,000 in your money. Now it costs just under 750. Most of the things we buy are imports,,,,,,,,,,,But, you would think that the American press and media would be making this front page news and our good men and women in the government would be on this problem. The question is why aren't they, as Americans, doing anything. Who is in control of all the press and all of the good American politicians? Are we just the mindless MOB. I think so.

Answer 4

Whew! That's a pretty impressive question!
But I'd like to address Lacey G's answer, if I may:
She says the "cost of defeat" would be:
LOSS OF FREEDOM - I maintain that we've already lost our freedom because the Bush administration has made us fearful of "terrorists" and surrounded us by a Department of Homeland Security that presumes us all to be guilty until proven innocent;
LOSS OF LIBERTY - We can no longer board an airplane without being treated like common criminals. Living in a free country with unlimited liberty also requires that we're taking a risk - a risk to be free (and, thus, running the risk of a possible danger to ourselves or our loved ones);
LOSS OF LIFE - Well, that's already happened. George W. Bush's multi-trillion-dollar folly has already cost 675,000 Iraqi lives and the lives of 3,500 U.S. soldiers;
LOSS OF PROPERTY - The runaway spending that G.W. Bush has squandered on this unconstitutional, illegal, unjustifiable, and immoral war will cost all American taxpayers dearly over the next few generations, which will result in the loss of property that we will no longer be able to afford because of how severely we'll be taxed in order to pay down the trillions of dollars Bush has put taxpayers in debt;
LOSS OF COUNTRY - It goes without saying that we've already lost our country. While the most arrogant, greedy, incompetent, cowardly, corrupt Republican-led Congress in U.S. history turned its back and allowed Bush to run rip shod over our Constitution; while Bush took the laws of our land into his own hands; while Bush ruined America's reputation as a world leader and global peacekeeper; while Bush disregarded the rules of the internationally-respected Geneva Convention; while Bush plunged us into insurmountable debt which will result in a severe economic depression shortly after he leaves office, we've already lost what once the greatest country on Earth.

Why is it we can spend TRILLIONS on war and cannot find a paltry $50 million in our federal budget with which to provide health insurance for poor children?

Why is it we can spend TRILLIONS on war and yet avoid the a few billion necessary to help our hungry, poor, aged, sick, disabled, underprivileged, unemployed, disadvantaged and homeless?

Why is it we can justify the mass murders of thousands of people all for the sake of OIL and WAR PROFITEERING (and for those of you who truly believe we're fighting this stupid war to bring democracy to Iraq, I pity your gullibility)
but can't 'afford' to rebuild our own infrastructure, help victims of hurricanes, or allow our elderly citizens to die with a certain amount of dignity and gentleness?

Why have we managed to screw up our priorities in this once-great United States of America, America?? -RKO- 06/17/07

Answer 5

Is this a statement or is there a question in there?