So now the war is on, and while I don’t think that there’s a good reason that dissent can’t and shouldn’t continue (I’m still mad at the political and diplomatic strong-arming in all of this), in sum I probably agree with Dan Kennedy that it’s in all of our interests that the invasion and overthrow and reconstruction is a success. I’m willing and ready to be proved wrong about misgivings I’ve had. If civilian casualties are minimized, if true democratic governance is established and if the temptation to fix Iraqi oil production in our narrowly pecuniary interests is avoided, I’m convinced that world opinion and liberal-left critiques will have had something to do with the outcome. By the same token, if all those happen, it will show the left and world opinion that Bush and administration can do what we/they didn’t expect they would be able to do.
Only that’s just half the story. As Walter Mead said on the NewsHour last night: “You know, when this Iraq thing is over, there is still North Korea; there is still Iran; there is still al-Qaida, there are failed states. There are still terrorist groups trying to get a hold of weapons of mass destruction. So I think what we are going to see in the aftermaths of Iraq is that the United States is going to face a kind of a possibly an overload, sensory overload of so many crises.” Not only a sensory overload, but a drain on the political will for war-making. As of now, there is a disconnect between the ramping up of our military spending and superpower plans, and the desire to pay less of our national output in taxes. An analysis in today’s Guardian reminds me how similar the current situation is to LBJ’s in the Vietnam build-up - a desire to have both guns and butter, and in the end deciding to inflate our way to pay the bills. I can’t help but feel that those calling for Tom Daschle’s head right now will be a little less sanctimonious when the bill arrives and the reality that war cost them money is driven home. Add to this American’s resolute unwillingness to save - and the corresponding current account deficit (We shouldn’t be taking a go it alone attitude when others are financing our consumption, Jeff Madrick argues.) - and you have a situation in which something has to give. I don’t have the solution certainly, but it’s maddening to see masculinism and rehashed TV-Western bravado standing in for honest discussion of trade-offs we’ll be called on to make. “War has no certainty except the certainty of sacrifice,” the president said. But yet he is not being upfront about the full sacrifices people will have to make.
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