John Boehner's view that dozens of dead Americans and billions of dollars per month is a "small price" to be paying in the Iraq War is an interesting perspective on the conflict but, I assume, a reasonable inference from the oft-stated conservative view that what's needed to shore up public support for the war is more rhetorical emphasis on the alleged stakes. To me, it seems like a pretty big price, especially because even the war's more serious proponents tend to take a surprisingly dim view of the prospects for success.
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Small Price
13 Sep 2007 05:09 pm
Comments (7)
I'd hate to see what Boehner thinks a "big price" is, though..
Probably him having to go through Boot Camp prior to deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Or him losing his next election - I bet that would be a "big price" in his mind.
I think the real question is, for that price, what are we buying?
Well, since this moron can see Iraq as a small price, I guess none of you should be surprised when Bush ups the ante by attacking Iran.
That should up the price by a factor of ten or so.
This comment should make clear that the neocons and the Zionists really do not give a shit how much pressure the US military is under, how many US lives are lost (let alone how many civilian lives in other countries) and how much expense the taxpayer must endure - or for that matter, any other negative result of their policies.
So why do we still have fools insisting that Bush will not attack Iran because a) he doesn't have any "political capital", and/or 2) because he doesn't have any troops?
As you can clearly see from this idiot's remarks, these people DO NOT CARE about reality. I've said that repeatedly, but until one of THEM says it, apparently nobody notices.
As NonyNony pointed out, Boehner is not subject to any negative repercussions of his policies. Unless he gets voted out - and even then, he'll get a cushy job somewhere. He stands to lose NOTHING by saying and doing ANYTHING.
The same with Bush, Cheney and the rest of the people in the US government. It took a couple years to get "Scooter" Libby in a courtroom for essentially committing treason - and then he got off via a sentence commutation! Most of the guys from the Iran-Contra affair are back in the government!
So what incentive do these guys have to treat this as anything other than a big game of greed and power?
So why is anybody surprised when things get steadily worse for the rest of us?
The real problem is: YOU voted these guys in! You voted in Boehner! You voted in Clinton! You voted in Bush! You WILL vote in Hillary or Obama or Rudy or some other criminal!
So what's going to change?
I will try to defend Boehner. We spend 250-300 million dollars per day for the war. We suffer several casualties. Money to casualties ratio seems to be 100 million dollars per dead soldier. Even taking into account the wounded, it seems that we pay bigger price in treasure than in blood.
However, I think that the actual cost is higher. As we are at war, we have no political possibility of stopping any of the innumerable military boondogles in the regular (non-war) budget, so I think that the extra money spend because of the war is a double what it cost us directly. Say, 200 billion per hear., round it to 10% of taxes. So a (somewhat upper) middle class family paying 10k in taxes pays 1k for the war. Perhaps enough to fix lunch for one person every day. Or enough to fund some very spiffy program of alternative energy. Or to make a transition to universal health care without rising taxes.
I checked. 2006, non-social security taxes, 1560 G$. The difference between "national defense" and "military budget ca 110 G$, meaning the war cost from supplemental budget. Probably we could be safe, or safer, on measly 300 G$ -- how many times more should we spend that all our opponents combined? So count 1/8 of non-FICA taxes as your personal war effort. With standard deduction, this is achievable for a single person with an income of 55 k$ or a couple with one child and 78 k$.
By the way, remember 300 $ "tax refund" we got one year? Our interest payments are higher than my expansive estimate of war effort, so multiply your putative war contribution by 1.2 to get the amount of interest you pay. Due to the financial genius of Bush Administration, this should grow very quickly now (first, more debt, second, big reliance on short Treasury bills, so big exposure to rising interest rates that we have).
piotr, one cost you're not factoring is the 10s of thousands of soldiers who've come back seriously wounded. And a lot of those are head wounds in people who would have died in earlier wars. The Pentagon has not begun to grapple with the impact of that.
Comments closed September 27, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
These people don't give a shit about regular people. Thus, dozens of young Americans killed per month is a "small price".
I'd hate to see what Boehner thinks a "big price" is, though...
Posted by CKT | September 13, 2007 5:40 PM