CNN.com – Reactions mixed to Bush’s address – Sep. 7, 2003
[T]he $87 billion is “more than the federal government will spend on education this year, twice as much as the federal government will spend on our roads, bridges, highways and public transit systems.”
Why not? If the above quotation is true, Iraq will get more taxpayer dollars for its infrastructure than all 50 states combined.
I’m of two minds about this.
- If we announce a timetable for the “Vietnamization” of Iraq — by which I mean the effective turnover of all civil administration to local authorities — that gives the old school Saddamites and Al Queda a clue as to how long they need to lie low before US forces leave and they can then recapture the country.
This also assumes it’s possible to make a prediction about how long such a transfer will take and I don’t think it’s at all possible.
- But leaving the commitment open-ended raises the other images of Vietnam — not the hopes but the reality. It could become a quagmire (or quicksand, to adopt a more appropriate local term).
We don’t know for sure that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are alive or dead, so what is the state of the war? Afghanistan and Iraq are both freed of the Taliban and Ba’ath regimes, but are the leaders who gave them their marching orders out of action?
It’s fine to say we need to finish the job but without knowing how long it will take, how much it will cost. or even how to quantify completion, what does that mean for the American taxpayer?