Posted by Benjamin on: 07.04.2007 /
Found this today from wikipedia:
A warmonger is, pejoratively, someone who is anxious to encourage a people or nation to go to war. It is often used to describe militaristic leaders, or mercenaries, commonly with the implication that they either may have selfish motives for encouraging war, or may actually enjoy war.
By etymology a warmonger is literally a seller of war, from monger used as a transitive verb, meaning a peddler.
The etymology bit is fascinating. Fishmongers sell fish, and warmongers sell war. Selling things is partially about dollars. Have you all seen this counter?
Two guys designed this back in April ‘03 and a year later turned it over to national priorities project. It is only talking about actual ongoing cost of the Iraq War only, and thus does not include, for instance, soldier’s normal pay, nor expected future costs such as medical care for wounded soldiers and so forth. In fact, Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz predicts that the ultimate cost of the war could top US$2 TRILLION. Yikes.
I gently suggest not staring at the counter for too long. I did that a couple times back when I first learned of it and got rather depressed.
The national priorities project page (costofwar.com) also has lots of interesting comparisons to help one get one’s head around what the money means–for instance, with the same amount of money, as of July 2, 2007, we could have
Or here’s an interesting video about what this amount of money looks like, which covers Iraq war spending through July ‘06, based on this page.
And here’s another helpful page about the cost of the Iraq War from the Council on Foreign Relations.
For me, all this kind of points toward the idea in this quote
If a thousand people were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood.
–Henry David Thoreau
“On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”
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Comment by: Rachel
1 07/4/07 8:24 AM | Comment Link |Benjamin, when I look at the Cost of the War counter, my reaction is I want to scream and wail and tear my clothes and throw ashes on my head like they did in Bible times.
I think about that famous quote from Thomas Jefferson, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
Comment by: David H
2 07/4/07 11:37 PM | Comment Link |The question that some believe to be pertinent is essentially: What are we buying for that money? They would argue that we are not buying war, rather we are purchasing peace. If we are not willing to pay the full cost, then we will not receive all of the goods. I have actually heard many people recently recasting the Vietnam era in those same terms. They say the American public — after killing or causing the death of only 4-10 million people in Southeast Asia — lost their nerve. We had the means, if only we hadn’t lost our resolve. If we had been willing to pay the full price, the world would be a different place. Of course that points to the other facet of the price of war — how much are a few pints of blood worth when they are spilled to the last drop from your son or daughter or father or sister? If the blood is from a stranger, a non-American, a bad person — is it OK to spend more?
Some would say the only thing that matters is what you get for what you pay. That may point to the over-arching fallacy of any counter (whether it be in greenbacks or red corpuscles) when applied to this war. Most in this country didn’t know what we were getting when we agreed to buy it and it won’t be the same thing when the purchase is completed. Also the terms of sale don’t make it clear how long we will have to pay and whether we will in fact have anything to show for it in the end. How do you win a war on a concept and when will you know you have won?
Some say we won’t know what we have or its worth until well after the fight is done. Only once the deal is completed (one way or the other) and time has passed will we be able to say with some certainty whether we got something worth the price paid.
Me, I have trouble with the economics of death. I sort of understand why they are needed — if we didn’t have actuaries we wouldn’t know how safe to make our vehicles (veiled reference to “Fight Game”). But on the other hand, I don’t see how I can spend anyone’s life but my own, regardless of what I might get for it. I appreciate all of those who gave their lives for me, but can’t help but wonder if they are satisfied now that they are aware of the full measure of that cost and what it bought? Perhaps we need to stop asking the living for their assessments and turn to the dead (all of them). They are unbiased, with nothing more to lose or gain. Let’s ask them if they feel like they got something worth the price that was paid.
Comment by: Shawn
3 07/5/07 9:08 PM | Comment Link |THIS IS A REAL PISSER!!!! I think we should fire the entire government and start over!
Comment by: Benjamin
4 07/6/07 8:25 AM | Comment Link |David,
I’m intrigued by your statements about asking the dead about their feelings about the worth of what their lives bought.
I was surprised to hear that youv’e heard people say that we should have pursued vietnam further. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, though.
I’m trying to figure out exactly what has been gained for all this blood and money. Iraq has plummeted downward on almost any metric you can imagine, hasn’t it?
Could it have to do with Eisenhower’s military industrial complex? It’s continuation and growth–is that what we are buying?
Comment by: David H
5 07/6/07 8:45 AM | Comment Link |An old adage for legal types and reporters tring to get to the source of an ugly situation is: follow the money. I don’t know whether it applies here, but it may provide some insight into why we launched a war based on such false or mistaken premises. I’m sure it is a coincidence that the VP helped create the DOD intelligence entity that provided the majority of that dumb intelligence and, likewise, just happenstance that info was accepted over what provided by more established and credible sources such as NSA and CIA. And none of that had anything to do with the company the VP used to run, which has been one of the biggest beneficiares of this war. We’ll see.
As for the reassessment of Vietnam, I thoght the first guy who mentioned it was kidding. he was a conservative family friend who knew my wife is Vietnamese. then I heard a pundit talking about it on Fox news. it has come up a couple of times since, in newspaper columns and talk radio. no doubt also a coincidence this is being reconsidered now.
Comment by: Rachel
6 07/6/07 9:07 AM | Comment Link |That is exactly what both my dad and my father-in-law have always said: We could have won the Vietnam war if the generals had been allowed to run the war without interference from Washington and if we had not given up when we did. I never heard either one of them admit that the Vietnam war was a mistake from the beginning and when I have expressed this view, it caused major conflict. They always maintained that we should have fought the Vietnam war and we should have won it. This was the consensus opinion I heard from basically all the adults in my life growing up. A LOT of people still believe and express this view.
Comment by: Rachel
7 07/6/07 9:28 AM | Comment Link |Another thing about guys like my dad and my father-in-law: Many of them were working class kids from big families who enlisted in the military because they saw it as the best (and sometimes only) opportunity to get an education and to better themselves. They felt then, and still feel now, a tremendous amount of resentment toward those “long-haired, dope-smoking hippies” from upper-middle class families who had their college deferments and spent their time protesting the war, while the working class guys and their buddies were getting blown up in the jungle.
This group of guys firmly believes that one of the reasons we lost in Vietnam was because the American people did not support the war and the troops. They feel that it is crucial that we not repeat the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq. To them that does not mean to recognize that we are in a terrible, immoral quagmire and end it at as quickly as possible. To them it means we must support the war and support the troops, we must let the generals run the war as they see fit and we must stay in Iraq till the war is won. In their minds, this is the only way to allow their fellow veterans to come home with dignity.
Comment by: David H
8 07/6/07 8:26 PM | Comment Link |By most conventional measures we did win the war. We killed far more Vietnamese soldiers than they killed our men and we destroyed the economy of N. Vietnam. Pres. Nixon promised to bomb that country into the stone age and very nearly succeeded. When I was there, 25 years after the war, Vietnam was still recovering.
But Ho Chi Minh promised that we would have to kill everyone in N. Vietnam (and most in the south) in order to have a final victory. Apparently we didn’t have the guts to do that (although nuclear weapons were discussed as a way to cow the north). And unless we had killed everyone we might have found maintaining an occupation there as much fun as we are now finding Iraq. As for governing such a country, it proved beyond our ability. Little surprise since we pitted a list of thugs, drug dealers and tin-pot dictators against the man considered by most Vietnamese to be their George Washington (Ho Chi Minh). The fools we foisted on Vietnam all seemed focused on a) getting rich and b) protecting their position. “A Bright Shining Lie” talks about the ghost armies that were allowed so that graft could flourish and how the leaders of S. Vietnam put incompetent relatives in charge of some military units and refused to arm others because they were more concerned about a coup than winning the war.
Seeing Vietnam in other terms is not realistic, which is why most pundits have never claimed the result could have been different — until recently. What has me concerned is that “experts” from the neo-cons are starting to say the result could have been different if we had just kept the course. What they want is not for the Vietnam war to receive an intelligent re-evaluation. What they want is for the lessons of that war to be forgotten so that we will continue to pursue the war in Iraq.
So far in the Iraq war we have made many of the same mistakes as Vietnam. The politicians (George W. and his cronies) have dictated policies that contradicted the wished of the generals (limiting troop numbers, insisting on how troops should be used, and foolishly believing that every turn would show us the end of the road). If you have a bad war that is wrongly pursued, how does it show support for the troops to insist that they stay?
From a practical standpoint the war in Iraq is shaping up to be an even greater disaster than Vietnam because when we were finished in SE Asia those countries were too broken to do anything other than survive. Whereas in Iraq we have provided a fertile recruiting and training ground for people who want nothing more than to kill Americans wherever they can find them. And unless we are willing to kill them all, there isn’t much we can do to change that.
The issue with both Vietnam and Iraq is that we might have the means to win the war by every available conventional measure. But what will be left when we’re through and what will we do with that? Or the more appropriate question may be what will it do with us? I once heard someone say that N. Vietnam won the war the same way mice swallow an elephant — one bite at a time. Now in Iraq we face the question once again if the elephant can kill all of the mice before they swallow him.