RANGER AGAINST WAR: War 101 <

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

War 101

I'll get off my high Constitutional horse for a moment, and voice another opposition to the Iraqi undertaking, this a purely economic one.

If you're going to maraud, make sure there's something to maraud for. We're depleting far more of our national treasure than we can ever hope to recoup in Iraq and Afghanistan. To borrow from the late Sam Kinison when he spoke of Africa, it's a desert folks.

The famous Marshall Plan was an investment for the future, and Iraq is a bottomless hole. And as we've repeatedly said, the Marshall Plan was a state department program, and we need to get back to diplomacy-led policy. If DoD leads, wars will follow.

Bush has admitted no link to the 9-11 bombers in the attack on Iraq, and we do not go for humanitarian reasons. I remember the first photos of the Birka-clad women and our sorrow that they could not show a little belly, ala Brittany Spears. Purple thumbs aside, they're still wearing birkas.

We do not fight on ideological grounds, though perhaps on ideological justifications. The truth is, the only ideology we are charged with upholding is the Constitution, as it applies to those within our borders. So, if war is not ideological, then economic.

But the national economy stands in dire straits. The Wall Street Journal says, "(t)he U.S.'s huge budget deficit threatens to make the country's economy less competitive," based on a study by the world economic forum (9/27/06). The U.S. is now the world's sixth most competitive economy--behind Finland and Singapore, and dropping from first place last year.

So where's the beef? Perhaps it starts on a ranch somewhere in Texas.

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