Bob Herbert has a great column in yesterday's Times that absolutely nails the key argument for the Democrats for this election: the unbelievable cost of the Iraq war and its effect on our economy.
The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.
I don't think anyone has picked up on this. This theme is one the Democrats must hit hard, now. We do not want to wait until the summer before rolling this argument out.
Obama, Clinton, and any Democrat with a microphone should be teeing this up now for the general election. Don't wait for Republicans to trot out their arguments about liberal fiscal irresponsibility, make them start defending the fiscal disaster that is the Iraq war, now.
The Herbert article focuses on the Bush administration's efforts to hide the costs, both short term and long, by ongoing "emergency funding" and the refusal to acknowledge the long term costs of the war (such as veterans care). There are also the disruptive effects to our economy of reserve deployments, not to mention the incredible drain of all of this non-productive government spending. According to a study cited by Herbert, the war has cost $2 trillion so far, will reach over $3 trillion, and is responsible for at least $1 trillion of the $2.5 trillion deficit the Bush administration has rung up since the war started. McCain has no answer to these costs or the growing deficit. He's for unending war and permanent tax cuts.
Herbert's strongest point: the war costs are not only completely unproductive, they are buying us are more costs in the form of future long term veterans care.
His weakest point: pointing out what else we could have spent the war money on:
... the money spent on the war each day is enough to enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants, or pay the annual salaries of nearly 11,000 additional border patrol agents or 14,000 more police officers.
Despite throwing in the token nod to conservative priorites (additional border agents) this reads like a classic litany of liberal spending programs, making it too easy for McCain to turn the argument around into a classic liberal fiscal irresponsibility rant (wasteful social programs and neglecting our security). Instead, democrats should just point out that the money spent on the war each day/month/year (the figures are not provided in the article) represents $XXX per day/month/year for each taxpayer, taken out of taxpayer pockets, for a war we never should have entered and most Americans want to end now. And then tie that in to the tax increases that will be necessary to continue such spending. And the ballooning deficit under the reckeless Bush/McCain administration.
Once this theme is established, the additional avenues of attack are endless. Corrupt contracts, wasteful spending, war profiteering. Breaking the Army. Neglecting Afghanistan. Etc.