Another year, another plea for patience

Monday was the fourth anniversary of King George’s war in Iraq. It came and went without much fanfare. Heck, even His Majesty almost forgot about it, what with keeping up with the everyday chores about the Royal Residence. There was, for instance, the photo op with the Florida Gators, the NCAA division one football champions from this last season. So I suppose that the King could be forgiven, if, in the mad rush of his workaday world, THE war temporarily slipped his mind.

Well, too, there is that bit of unpleasantness surrounding Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, who is the latest member of Bush’s Cabinet to occupy the hot seat. The hot seat, by the way, can nowadays be found in front of some congressional committee or subcommittee that is investigating the actions or (mis) statements of this administration. Gonzales is trying hard to come up with a coherent explanation as to why eight U. S. Attorneys were suddenly let go. These explanations should go beyond the fact that the most of them had, up until the date of their dismissal, glowing performance evaluations, and were even members in good standing of the Republican Party. One, though, had the temerity to actually get a Republican congressman, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, indicted and convicted, and may have been looking at other targets from the GOP. This federal prosecutor even arranged for a nice room for “the Duke” at one of the federal prisons for which the Congressman may have voted at one time in his career, while getting tough on crime.. (And this was the thanks he got.) Another of the fired U. S. Attorneys was obviously lax in his duties in that he didn’t spend enough time investigating Democrats. Never mind what for, the fact that they are Democrats automatically means that they’ve been up to something. All in all, things like this are enough to put you off your mark.

But of course, once George the Lesser was reminded by the Royal Aides of his oversight, he sprang into action at once. He untangled himself from the other affairs of his day, and immediately suggested that “patience” was needed, and that, given enough time, his “new” strategy would work. Patience and understanding from the American public is one thing, although it is unlikely to be forthcoming, polls suggesting that an overwhelming majority simply have no faith in the King and his ability to prosecute a war, but patience and understanding from the groups who are really needed in order to see this thing through to a successful conclusion, the Sunnis, Shi’a, and Kurds in Iraq, is even more of a long shot. Polls in that war-torn country show that among other interesting little tidbits of info, only 18% of Iraqis have any confidence that the “surge” will work, and further that a full 86 % of Iraqis are concerned that they or someone from their family will fall victim to the violence that has swept this country since the King declared victory there in the first year of the war.

One way to look at a war in order to determine whether the efforts expended have made it worthwhile is to trot out statistics from it. Certain statistics are well-known, figures such as the number of American troops killed and wounded-as of the 17th of this month, 3218 killed, 24,042 wounded-but other statistics are harder to come by. One such statistic would be the number of Iraq civilians killed in this war. One reason for this may be that no one took responsibility to count the number of civilian casualties in the first few years of the war. As a result, there is a wide variance in the number of civilians reported killed, depending on who is quoting the stats on them. The U. N. estimated before the war was that as many as a half a million civilians could be killed. From the Bush administration, on the one occasion that the King broached the subject, came a guestimate of “30,000”, one way or another. Other estimates have been as high as 600,000. Whatever the true number, one suspects that it is rather high, given that so few Iraqis feel safe in their own country.

It is where we get into the financial cost of the war that the stats really get interesting. When this war first started, it was estimated that it would cost a measly fifty billion dollars. Sadly, almost everyone, including the Democratic minority in Congress, went along with this estimate. The one fellow who disagreed was Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economist, who thought costs would run as high as two hundred billion. He was promptly fired for throwing in his two-cents worth. Well, the federal government is known for cost overruns, but really, the final cost overrun of this war is ridiculous, even by their standards. The tally so far is a half a trillion dollars, and it is now guessed that the final tally will be over one trillion dollars. Looking at these figures another way, it would take you 95 years to count to one billion, and as to one trillion, don’t even think about it, as it would occupy the best 200,000 years of your life.

According to the New York Times, in an article by David Leonhardt, the government could, with one trillion dollars, double cancer research money, treat every American whose diabetes and heart conditions are not now being checked, immunize every child in the world, and not use up even half of that money. The rest of the money would provide for universal pre-school for every three-and four-year old in the U. S., completely re-build the hurricane-ravaged city of New Orleans, and, to placate those who insist on a more secure country, completely put into place those safeguards the 9/11 commission has recommended. All that, plus increased financing for the war in Afghanistan, where the Taliban’s reSURGEnce could be countered.

Four years into the Iraqi war, it seems, and all we have is a trillion dollar-plus debt, and a sovereign who is not unlike Great Britain’s George III, the mad King who insisted his war against the colonies was a sound one. Come to think of it, with the reality of the Iraq war staring him in the face, you really can’t blame our own mad monarch for finding other things with which to occupy himself on this somewhat less-than-auspicious date in history.