Atlantic Blogging
The Atlantic Monthly on why the war in Iraq is a terrible folly and a terrible waste of money:
Imagine if the Iraq trillion were spent fighting that war. Would you rather spend a billion a week in Iraq for the next five years or buy up every "loose nuke" in the countries of the former Soviet Union, keeping the world's evilest weapons from falling into the hands of men imbued with evil ideology?
Iraq, or secure our porous borders using the National Guard.
Iraq, or harden our nuclear, chemical, and electric plants. Iraq, or fund a Manhattan Project-style green energy program, ending the dependence on Saudi oil that in the wake of the Persian Gulf War made us base combat troops in Saudi Arabia, which led to the September 11 attacks and the current war.
Iraq, or pour our intellectual and Madison Avenue resources into a campaign to change Muslim hearts and minds. Picking up on a Defense Intelligence Board finding that Arabs value "justice" more than "democracy," that campaign should be built around justice for the Palestinians—homes for every homeless Palestinian refugee, nation-building deluxe—and for Egyptians and for Saudis, whose regime we'll be freer to confront over its sponsorship of anti-Western extremism as we move toward energy independence.
Iraq, or help Israel finance its withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank and secure its borders.
Billions into Iraq, or billions into human intelligence, bribes, and other devices to expose terrorist networks.
This isn't left-wing vs right-wing, this is smart vs stupid. And those in favor of continuing and escalating the war in Iraq are not on the intelligent side.
