Darth Cheney is the real bionic man with his implanted electronic pacemaker and all the human warmth of an oil derrick, but between him and Chimpy, the true estimated cost of the war/occupation will be six trillion dollars. And how many more dead soldiers?Economist Joseph Sitglitz latest book gives details, conservative estimates on,
"...the economic cost of the war to the U.S. to be $3 trillion, and the costs to the rest of the world to be another $3 trillion – far higher than the Bush administration's estimates before the war.
The Bush team not only misled the world about the war's possible costs, but has also sought to obscure the costs as the war has gone on."
The Toronto Star has an article by Dr. Stiglitz detailing some of those costs.
To make matters worse, Iraq and its human costs have fallen off the radar for the majority of Americans. The Pew Research Center's latest survey finds that only 28% of Americans know the American military death toll which today stands at 3993 according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.
Ranger Against War has posted on this as well, and it's worth a read.
10 comments:
Maybe the sad but inevitable "4,000" US dead figure will get the country's attention.
Don't count on it Tom. I've been trying to shine a light on the true cost in human life since I started this blog. Unfortunately even the majority of the left-leaning 'choir,' while being compassionate, don't have a personal stake in the number of casualties.
I have friends in Iraq and Afghanistan, and my soon-to-be-ex-husband is on his way to Iraq in a dozen weeks. We have friends just back, and more on their way. We have lost friends. And still, less than one percent of Americans have or know someone in the military currently serving.
It's hard to feel directly connected when you don't know anyone there.
The current media free-for-all focusing on the cat-fight between the candidates and Eliot Spitzer's dick only aids in keeping the true cost of war off the radar of the American psyche.
I do hope you are right in the end. Thanks for stopping by.
That's the problem, isn't it? Fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is the job of a small part of the country. The rest of the country might care, but when their kids and friends aren't involved they're bound to be less motivated to keep track of what's going on.
I suppose that's part of what the Bush Administration is counting on - along with their ownership of the press.
Great post, but I can't help feeling outrage that not only do Americans not care about the American deaths, they don't care about over a million Iraqi deaths. And quite frankly, I think that is the greater tragedy. All casualties in war matter, not just "ours".
US citizens didn't react at 1000 or 2000 or 3000. I don't think 4000 will be a magic number either. As you've pointed out in the past, the number is probably over double that anyway, since those who die after being flown out of Iraq are not even counted as Iraq casualties.
Americans are citizens of the empire and as long as they can continue their wasteful consumerist ways (bread and circuses) using up the world's resources, they could give a rat's ass about who has to die to maintain the system.
I don't think most people will wake up until the empire turns in against its own people and the barbarians are at the gate. Then, it will be too late.
Pitchforks and torches aside Isis, I agree with you on everything. Most certainly the estimated one million Iraqi deaths, and the four million displaced Iraqis pale in comparison to U.S. losses. Americans in their xenophobia, fomented by BushCo, have historically shown little interest in the misery of others and yet, a strange dichotomy exists in the American psyche, on one of deep compassion, contrasted by abject indifference.
Our desire to help, the caring we show others we share the planet with, is so short-lived, and with a clearly ADD-reminicent component, it seems only activated by emergent, great, tragedy. We have to see it over and over before we break through the veil of denial in which we are so firmly ensconced.
When was the last time the American MSM showed the unending violence in Iraq--either on Americans or Iraqis? Virtually never over the last five years. I agree with cujo and know it to be part of the BushCo plan to keep us quiet.
I concentrate my energies on that in which I am most personally invested--American lives. Mostly because, I feel those losses have the greatest chance of breaking through to other Americans, and activating our long-lost revolutionary spirit.
Thank you for your always thoughtful commentary. You are one of the people that makes me hope.
Interestingly enough, last night I asked 3 people in their twenties and thirties, about the death toll and the poll. Asked how many dead Americans? Three answers: 10,000--20,000--50,000
So who knows how many American deaths it will take before Americans do anything...
From the blog, Ranger Against War:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
--Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953)
http://www.warcomeshome.org/
Winter Soldiers do Iraq & Afghanistan
Winter Soldiers direct linky
Thanks Anon.
"humanity hanging on a cross of iron"
amen.
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