Here's an interesting speech on our current economic situation by Peter Peterson, a fiscal conservative who was Nixon's fmr. Sec. of Commerce, and who was recently head of the NY Federal Reserve.

Peterson's new book is titled "Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It."

An excerpt from the speech:

"Some seem to have forgotten that while our military is stunningly effective, it is also stunningly expensive. It's very different from the good old days, World War II for example, which was a bit like organizing a federal jobs program: quick training of inexpensive troops with inexpensive equipment. In today's high-tech, high-cost military, the brute fact is that these fats have ballooned. For example, it costs us a billion dollars a week for just two divisions in Iraq conducting, quote, stability operations.

Some quick factoids. The Congressional Budget Office under Republican control tells us the following: They say realistic defense budget estimates for the next decade should be 18 percent or higher, or a trillion dollars more than the official estimates. And they remind us that the official budgets include no provision for wars; also no provision for additional troops, even our 54 out of 61 members of the House Armed Services Committee oppose that; and were we to meet the criticism of having a 10-division Army to meet our 12-division priorities, the personnel-related expenses alone would come to about $40 billion annually."

Aaman-
You speak about the Iraq war and reconstruction in terms of marginal cost and marginal benefit. This is a very interesting approach to the situation. However, one thing that most liberals fail to ever open their eyes to, is that, economically, the war on terror will never have any marginal benefit. Economically, we will never be able to measure the terrorist attacks that don't happen as a benefit or social "profit." It is impossible to measure something that doesn't exist, so your argument is a severely flawwed tautology of economic philosophy.

Had Iraq been left alone though, they could have easily used their out-of-range Al-saud missles to attack any of their neighbors, including Isreal. Saddam could have issued that the biological poisons contained in the 11 empty warheads found be launched on his own people, or against another nation. How could you honestly argue that the Middle East was more stable before his termination as dictator? He was a madman, with a gun in his hand and hist hand on the trigger. Every dollar we spent on removing him, and the subsequent reconstruction, has been worth it.

-Stuart

PS. UN resolutions had orded him to disarm completely, and he blatantly refused. The UN did nothing.

Stuart,

I do not intend a flawed economic analysis. Using your approach, however, I would suggest a binomial Black-Scholes model, wherein we assign a cost and probability to the above mentioned, and create a model that would show valid economic justification of the war. Hmmm - PhD thesis, anyone?

I respect your views and agree with them as a citizen of a country threatened by one unstable nuclear power and another encroaching nuclear power. I am however, afflicted by the plight of a wounded child. I also see a madman propped up by the West and then dethroned. In the long run, what the United States did is good, and future generations will value the cost of war differently. Ref my post on Harry Turtledove's book, who can tell whether the alternate realities might have been better or worse. We will have to make the best of what we have.