No not Jackson. But I'm sure this post will be covered up quickly by pictures of our Jack so you can ignore anything that I write in this space.
Read this at lunch today. It's a Nicholas Kristof (NY Times) article about the cost of the US's involvement in Iraq. I don't feel like I have solid footing to answer what we should do now that we are already in Iraq, but the fact is we are there now. And I'm not talking about whether or not we should have become involved in the first place. Totally separate question that does not have only one answer.
My dilemma is this seesaw:
"...staying in Iraq indefinitely undermines our national security by empowering jihadis — just as we now know that our military presence in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s was, in fact, counterproductive by empowering Al Qaeda in its early days. On the other hand, supporters of the war argue that a withdrawal from Iraq would signal weakness and leave a vacuum that extremists would fill, and those are legitimate concerns."
You know the arguments.
However, what I find engaging in this column is where the money could be used instead of Iraq and the monetary entitlements the situation will create.
"A Congressional study by the Joint Economic Committee found that the sums spent on the Iraq war each day could enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start or give Pell Grants to 153,000 students to attend college. Or if we’re sure we want to invest in security, then a day’s Iraq spending would finance another 11,000 border patrol agents or 9,000 police officers."
The article says the US is spending $411 million dollars a day in Iraq. Yowzers. That's a lot of money spent/financed that could go to some other exceptional causes. Domestic or international.
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