one sip at a time

unnamedplayer:

harbaugh may be a jerk, but he’s a fair and balanced jerk.  (tyrone on the other hand did plenty to offend LGBT community…)

rajiv: From the article:

Harbaugh called back to personally state he never said the word “f***ot.”

…

Harbaugh acknowledged that he did curse but did not say an anti-gay slur.

So he said … what?  He’s obviously swearing at the ref - he just said, “That’s bullshit!”, called him an “Asshole” and screamed out “You’ve got to be kidding me!”  Then he clearly yells, “Fucking asshole _____” and it looks like the blank starts with an F and sounds like “faggot.”  “Fucking asshole foghat”?  “Fucking asshole maggot?”  “Fucking asshole faked it”?

interstate:

$45 billion is what?  $150 per US resident.  We need to start charging war taxes.  Among other things, a problem with both these “wars” is that very few of us actually feel that we’re at war in our day-to-day lives.

rajiv: Agreed.  Among my many objections to the Bush (and now Obama) policy on war and taxes: by my count, the 2003 Iraq War and Bush tax cuts marked the first time in history that taxes were cut during a war.  Not just in United States history: in the history of all human civilizations.  The people authorizing the war through their representatives should be paying for the war - not handing off the costs to their kids and grandkids.

That said, $150 per person doesn’t begin to the tell the whole story.  Military / National Security Discretionary spending accounted for 901 Billion Dollars of the 2008 budget (the latest data I had at my fingertips - maybe we’re over a trillion now).  That’s $3000 per person.  It’s also 25% of all federal outlays that year; 39% of all federal tax receipts; and 65% of all federal tax receipts not including social insurance / retirement taxes.  That’s right: if you just look at the money our federal government actually has, it’s spending the equivalent of 2/3 that amount on the military and national security every year.

Source

bfizzle:

caffeinated:

bfizzle:

caffeinated:

[snip]

The surge dramatically reduced the violence in Iraq, led to Maliki’s government taking a more active role in Iraqi security and governance, enabled a relatively peaceful democratic election, and allowed the US to start putting a timeline on withdrawal from Iraq. If we can do those things in Afghanistan with this surge, it would have been worth it.

rajiv: That’s the argument, anyway.  It’s not unreasonable; I just don’t agree with the conclusion.

“If we can do those things in Afghanistan with this surge, it would have been worth it.”  The problem is the second “it” - I don’t like the tradeoff even if it does buy the results of the Iraqi surge.  President Obama’s plan announced today calls for 30,000 additional troops before starting withdrawal in about 18 months.  At $1 million per troop per year, that’s an additional 45 billion dollars.  Even if the Afghan surge reduces violence, allows the government to take a more active role in security and governance, enables a relatively peaceful democratic election, and pre-justifies the timeline on withdrawal announced today, I don’t think it’s worth an extra $45B that we don’t have.  If we’re going to spend money we don’t have, I’d rather we spend it saving lives.

The Iraqi surge was about 20,000-28,000 troops, and it might be a cheaper war in terms of dollars per soldier.  But if we use the $1MM / troop / year figure as a rough estimate, and lowball the number of surge troops, we’re still looking at $20B per year.  Troop levels still haven’t dropped to pre-surge levels, so let’s call that $40B in the two years of surge.  That $40B bought us Iraq’s current situation, we’re told, which is unarguably better than it was pre-surge.  But it still wasn’t worth it.  What did we get out of it?  I don’t believe for a second that we’re 40 billion dollars safer - 40 billion dollars is the entire Homeland Security Department’s annual budget.  In thirty years if my kids ask me, “What did America get for the 2007 surge that I’m paying for?” (and they’re the ones who will be paying for it), I will have no answer for them.

As cynical as my perspective is when it comes to Iraq, at least there’s oil there and a there was a recent history of modern, industrialized civilization.  Maybe the surge bought democracy, and American oil companies are going to skim forty billion dollars worth of oil off of the newly democratized Iraq that they wouldn’t have been able to had we not surged.  That looks like a shitty deal, but at least it sorta worked and there’s upside potential.  When it comes to Afghanistan, (1) I’m not nearly so optimistic about the chance to produce a stable government with our surgetastic military might, because the region has no history of stable government; and (2) Even if it works, I don’t see what we get out of it.  Are we really going to pay 45 billion dollars for the prayer that we’ll somewhere calm from which to attack Al Qaeda forces in Pakistan?

bfizzle:

caffeinated:

Oh wait, I guess technically you’re not him.  Oops.

Say, you realize you didn’t win the Nobel War Prize, right?

Now, I’m not endorsing Obama’s decision to escalate in Afghanistan, but that article is kind of silly when you take into account the fact that the Iraq troop surge worked really well. So Obama’s talking points are similar to Bush’s? Who cares, when it was the only foreign policy thing that Bush did that worked.

rajiv: “the Iraq troop surge worked really well” - I know this is the consensus view, but really, did it?  Or did it just fail slightly less?  Have we won?  What did we win?  Are we closer to any satisfactory outcome that actually seems realistically attainable?  Without wasting another few hundred billion dollars (that we don’t have)?  Within the next year next few years next decade foreseeable future?

The surge worked really well to perpetuate an endless war whose failure is a foregone conclusion.

Oh wait, I guess technically you’re not him.  Oops.

Say, you realize you didn’t win the Nobel War Prize, right?