Afternoon open thread

Yes, the elections in Iraq are great. But was it worth hundreds of billions of dollars of OUR money and an ongoing costs of billions per week? Was it worth 1500 American lives, and counting? I'm not so sure, and I doubt the US public is so sure. It's cute for politicians like Bush to play the "isn't it sweet that they can vote" game, and try to deflect us from the cost. But politics, like life, is about costs. If you asked the American public if they'd pay $500 billion and 3,000 American lives and put the country into a massive deficit for the US to go it alone and free some third world country from dictatorship so they could vote in free elections, I'm not so sure folks would be so quick to say yes.

This was a war of choice, and Bush spent our money to do it. It is grotesque that he could find hundreds of billions of dollars at the drop of a hat to do this, while so many unaddressed problems remain at home. Either we have the money or we don't. But to claim that we have to slash the budget for domestic programs when we always seem to find the money for military programs, that is grotesque. I am all for a strong military, and am rather hawkish on war (when I'm not being lied to), but someone needs to ask Bush sometime "if deficits aren't necessarily bad, and if there really IS more money out there provided we think the cause is important enough, then why don't we go into more of a deficit to address some of our domestic needs?" I simply don't like this "there is no money" garbage when they then turn around and find it. What that means is that the problem isn't a lack of money, it's a lack of concern.