The US presidential campaign thus far has been notable for the lack of discussion on the more controversial policies of incumbent President George W. Bush.
There has been scarcely a mention of Guantanamo Bay, the discarding of the Geneva Conventions, secret CIA prisons, the warrantless wire-tapping, or the “signing statements” in which Mr Bush basically says he will ignore portions of any legislation passed by Congress that he doesn’t agree with.
What has been truly surprising is the lack of focus on a war which was begun under false assumptions and carried out according to a recipe for disaster.
There are two main reasons for this. One is that the administration’s “surge” strategy has been successful in bringing greater security to some areas of Iraq. Perhaps more importantly, the rate of US casualties has declined. The other reason is, of course, that the worsening US economy has become the main concern of most voters.
Still, a new book by Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes – The Three-Trillion-Dollar War, which cites the war as a main contributor to the economic decline – may help return it to the forefront of the presidential campaign. The book points out the tremendous and growing true costs of waging the war, which for 2008 are projected to exceed $12.5 billion a month, up from $4.4 billion in 2003. What’s more, the authors note that a major hidden and often long-term cost is medical care for the more than 60,000 soldiers wounded in action and in non-combat situations.
The drain on the US budget is certainly a valid reason for prioritising the war as a campaign issue, but it goes without saying that a true monetary cost cannot be put on the suffering of those injured soldiers and their families, much less for those who have lost their lives in the war, now close to 4,000, including non-combat deaths.
The suffering is multiplied many times for the Iraqis and their loved ones, who have died violently or been injured as a result of the war. Documented deaths are reported at 89,353 from the start of the war till February 2008. The British polling firm Opinion Research Business estimates that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US invasion.
Unlike at the present time on the campaign trail, as soon as he or she is sworn in, the next US president will have to deal with Iraq in all its complexities.
An immediate US pullout would create a vacuum that would be filled by more chaos. But this should not be taken to mean that a US presence is desirable in the long term. By any yardstick the occupation has been a disaster for both the United States and Iraq. It has been said that laying down troop reduction targets “aids the enemy”, but it is difficult to see how a withdrawal can be accomplished without a plan.
If we look at the three contenders, we see that Senator Barack Obama has gone furthest along that road, having helped author legislation to begin a phased withdrawal of troops. He has said his first act as president would be to sit down with the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and discuss how this should be carried out.
Hopefully, all three US presidential candidates will be more outspoken on the issue in the coming weeks.
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