Here is the current news:
In other words: no Iraq withdrawal dividend is in the cards, as I explained in detail five months ago, well before the current administration took office.
Military interventionism--either Bush style or Obama style--is expensive. That's why--even after electing a President who promised us change--the Defense Budget continues to go up, and up, and up....
With US military commitments to Afghanistan forever on the rise, and the president still tenatively planning to slash the Iraq force by August of next year, budget documents from the Pentagon suggest that the costs of the war in Afghanistan will eclipse the war in Iraq in 2010.
Of the $130 billion the Obama Administration is seeking in its 2010 budget for overseas missions, $65 billion is allocated for Afghanistan and only $61 billion for Iraq. Vice Admiral Steve Stanley says “this request is where you’re going to first see the swing of not only dollars or resources, but combat capability, from the Iraqi theater into the Afghan theater.”
In other words: no Iraq withdrawal dividend is in the cards, as I explained in detail five months ago, well before the current administration took office.
Military interventionism--either Bush style or Obama style--is expensive. That's why--even after electing a President who promised us change--the Defense Budget continues to go up, and up, and up....
Comments
It is not Obama that I am criticizing in this post--and I will give you that I am not clear. Obama has ALWAYS been an advocate of military interventionism and an increased defense budget.
If, however, you go back through both the DE blogosphere and places like the Kos you will find legions of Obama supporters who argued that he would be able to fund many of his programs with an Iraq dividend, and many of them ridiculed my assertion that there would be no such thing as an Iraq dividend.
Probably I should have gone back and spent the two hours necessary to link to all those comments, but I didn't--and the folks I am addressing know exactly who they are.