Lessons Unlearned

Joseph E. Stiglitz, professor of economics at Columbia University, has a pretty scathing op-ed piece up in The Jordan Times. Professor Stiglitz is the economist who, with Linda Blimes, wrote “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict”, and this essay points out just how accurate his analysis was in that book. More importantly, Prof. Stiglitz also connects the dots between the war and our dangerously ill economy, something no candidate in the upcoming elections has dared to note.

The Iraq war has been replaced by the declining economy as the most important issue in America’s presidential election campaign, in part because Americans have come to believe that the tide has turned in Iraq: the troop “surge” has supposedly cowed the insurgents, bringing a decline in violence. The implications are clear: a show of power wins the day.

It is precisely this kind of macho reasoning that led America to war in Iraq in the first place. The war was meant to demonstrate the strategic power of military might. Instead, the war showed its limitations. Moreover, the war undermined America’s real source of power - its moral authority. [Emphasis added]

This is certainly bad enough, but the Bush administration has done more than destroy any claim to moral authority the US ever had. It has also wrecked our economy and the Iraq misadventure is one of the primary reasons, if not the most important.

Even the largest and richest country in the world has limited resources. The Iraq war has been financed entirely on credit; and partly because of that, the US national debt has increased by two-thirds in just eight years.

But things keep getting worse: the deficit for 2009 alone is expected to be more than a half-trillion dollars, excluding the costs of financial bail-outs and the second stimulus package that almost all economists now say is urgently needed. The war, and the way it has been conducted, has reduced America’s room to manoeuvre, and will almost surely deepen and prolong the economic downturn. [Emphasis added]

One of the more disturbing parts of this analysis, and I admit that I accept it as a solid one, is that no one is connecting the dots between our national "misadventure" and the declining economy in any meaningful way. Most Americans are now on record as deploring the Iraq War, but right now their focus is on the very real pocket book issues of the increased cost of food, fuel, and housing just as winter is about to hit. Yet no candidate for national office is willing to touch the issue.

But the most disturbing part of this analysis is that was published not in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, or Washington Post, but in the Jordan Times.

I just don't get it.