Face it, the war will never end. It's just too damned important to our economy.
This won't be news to a lot of people around here, but the ~$500 billion in regular defense spending this year plus ~$100 billion in supplemental war funding act as a powerful bulwark between our (chimerical) "way of life" and an economic catastrophe of titanic proportions. That's just the way it is, and that's why the war will never end.
It's as simple as that, but there's still a lot to consider.
There are two main variables in play, here, and a whole bunch of intermediate/ancillary variables. The first is oil. The second relates to good ol'-fashioned Soviet-style central management of the national economy, i.e., ya' gotta stimulate demand.
Let's address oil first:
As long as oil is denominated in dollars on the global market, we Americans will remain relatively flush. Every nation will need dollars, hence the value of the dollar will remain relatively stable, even with the federal government printing them like there's no tomorrow. At worst, there will be (and has been) a slow, barely noticeable erosion of the value of a currency that has no intrinsic value.
The war in Iraq keeps oil denominated in dollars, especially now. If the U.S. pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which the Iraqi people would do us too many favors. Think about it: if another country invaded your country and completely f*cked up your life in every way, you probably wouldn't want to prop up their intrinsically worthless currency by denominating trade in your vital resources in said currency. If we pull out, they will drop the dollar like a steaming, leaky bag of crap. For this reason, it is vital that the U.S. remain in Iraq.
The second reason is the good old-fashioned Soviet-style central management of the economy mentioned above. Dairy prices and internet radio royalties aside, for the most part, the folks in Washington don't micromanage the economy the way the Soviets did; nonetheless, decisions made in Washington have profoud effects on Wall Street and Main Street. The $600 billion we'll spend on "national defense" this year is not an insignificant chunk of change to pump into the economy. It multiplies when soldiers buy clothes for their kids (and retailers post profits), when defense contractors hold meetings in hotels (and hotel workers pay their rent), when factory workers making military gadgets pay their mortgages (and banks stay solvent). Take even a hundred billion off the table, and the ripples would be felt like a tsunami of economic entropy.
Sure, we could artificially stimulate our economy by shoring up our infrastructure, by slapping solar panels on every roof, by providing tools to teachers -- but that still wouldn't solve the international angle of propping up the phony dollar. We simply must hold a gun to the world's head and force them to pay for their oil with it. That's just the way it is.
Face it: We Americans are lazy and completely devoid of any real skills. We like having Chinese slaves to make our gewgaws and Mexican slaves to mow our lawns and grow our food. Hell, we couldn't grow our own food even if we wanted to, and we've forgotten how to manufacture the things we need on a day-to-day basis; at any rate, the capital (machinery) to do that is now in China -- our mills are empty husks, falling into ruin. We don't want to ride bicycles and take busses. We don't want to be poor. We enjoy our way of life. To maintain that way of life, we must have endless war. That's just the way it is, and that's why the war will never end. Even if the Iraqi insurgents lay down their arms, let bygones be bygones and accept a South Korea-type situation with permanent U.S. bases, we'll need to find another war.
/rant