The Redhunter

Variations

During the last election, we heard that the war in Iraq was using money that we "needed" at home. John Kerry made this part of his campaign pitch, saying that the administration requested

$200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford health care for our veterans...We're spending $200 billion in Iraq while the costs of health care have gone through the roof and we're told we don't have the resources to make health care affordable and available for all Americans. They're charging 17 percent more for Medicare while making America pay $200 billion for a go-it-alone policy in Iraq. That's the wrong choice; that's the wrong direction; and that's the wrong leadership for America.

Although I don't have the link to prove it, I also specically recall hearing about school funding in particular. This argument is that since schools in the US are "starved of money", the money spent in Iraq is taking money that is badly needed at home.

However it is stated, the objection is really the same, that we need the troops or the money at home.

Why it is Dishonest

The argument is dishonest for a very simple reason; it's not the real objection. Afghanistan costs money. Our deployment of troops in Kosovo etc costs money. In fact, we have a lot of troops in a lot of places around the world period, yet one never hears objections to these deployments along the lines of disaster relief or financial necessity. Granted, we have more troops in Iraq and it costs more than the other places, but I really don't think that invalidates my point, which is that the disaster relief/financial necessity argument is a smokescreen.

Generally speaking, whether a war is right or wrong must be decided on issues other than financial need at home. Let's be honest, compared to most of the rest of the world in a country we are filthy rich(a good thing, I hasten to add). Consider;

We worry about computers in schools, while most of the world worries about roofs for their schools.

We worry about prescription drug benefits, most of the world worries about getting drugs period.

Either a war is right or it is wrong. The arguments used to justify a war can be many, as can the arguments against it. But to argue that it would cost too much just seems rather vulgar to me given that we live in the richest nation in the world.

During the last election campaign, many Democrats were making the "we need the money at home" argument. Christopher Hitchenshad some choice words for those who subscribed to this line of reasoning:

There is something absolutely charmless and self-regarding about this pitch, and I wish I could hear a senior Democrat disowning it. It is no better, in point of its domestic tone and appeal, than the rumor of the welfare mother stopping her Cadillac to get vodka on food stamps. In point of its international implications, it also suggests the most vulgar form of isolationism, not to say insularity. ...

The further implication is that this is a zero-sum game, and that a dollar spent in Iraq is a dollar not spent on domestic needs. In other words, that this hospital or school in New Jersey or Montana would now be fully funded if it wasn't for a crowd of Arab and Kurdish panhandlers. Could anything be more short-sighted than that? Have we not learned that failed states turn into rogue states, and then export their rage and misery? Would we not prosper ourselves—if the question has to be stated in this way—if the Iraqi economy recuperated to the point where it could become a serious trading partner?

This common-sense or self-interested objection doesn't exhaust the argument. A few years ago, many of the same liberals and leftists were quoting improbable if not impossible numbers of dead Iraqi children, murdered by the international sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein. Even at its most propagandistic, this contained an important moral point: Iraqi civilians were suffering for the sins of their dictatorship (and from the lavish corruption of the U.N. supervision of the "oil-for-food" program). OK, then, we'll remove the regime and lift the sanctions. Happy now? Not at all! It turns out that 1) the Saddam regime was only a threat invented by neo-cons and that 2) we don't owe the Iraqi people a thing. Also, we could use the money ourselves.

I'd almost forgotten how good Hitch could be.