Another tactic used by the left against the Iraq war has been the cost. Looks like another lie has been debunked: (via NRO and CDR Salamander)
Critics of the war in Iraq often complain about the ?escalating cost of the war.? Listening to them, you?d never know that the war is one of the least expensive in American history.
Robert Whaples, professor of economics at Wake Forest University, has measured the cost of each major American war up through the first Gulf War. We took these costs and compared them to the cost of the Iraq war and found that the Iraq experience has consumed a smaller percentage of GDP (just 2 percent of one year?s wealth creation) than every other American war except the first Gulf War (which measured just 1 percent of GDP).
This stands in stark contrast to the Vietnam experience, which opponents have often attempted to liken to the Iraq war. Vietnam comprised a much heartier 12 percent of GDP at the time. Other conflicts, such as World War II, took a remarkable 130 percent of a year?s GDP to see through to success.
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Curt, you have got to stop cheapening this War/anti-War debate with silly things like accurate facts. It’s conventional wisdom that War is expensive, that war is evil, that the enemy is misunderstood, blah, blah, blah. What’s going to happen to the debate if you keep undermining the either side’s “facts.”
Pretty hard not to snicker when liberals open their mouths. Nothing useful comes out of them, just idiocy.
Another charge often leveled by those who hate this war as “illegal” and “immoral”, is how the money used to finance the war takes away from education. Education spending has gone up somewhere around 40% under this President (perhaps to the consternation of conservatives; but you’d think at least the libs would be appeased about it); and total school spending is close to $500 billion, which is more than we spend on national defense ($454 billion).
And I snicker when I still hear “No blood for oil” and how we are profiteering; or how Halliburton is turning an enormous profit on this.
is any of this inflation adjusted? and, more important, what are the respective deficits being run by the government during these wars?
iraq may be comparatively cheap but each dollar represents a far greater expense now.