Wars – too big to fail?

For a nation that doesn’t like bailouts, we sure have spent a lot on rescuing the military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Initially, Iraq was about weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaida, and when those rationales dissipated, it became about spreading democracy, stabilizing a Middle Eastern nation and “fighting them there, so we don’t have to fight them here” – the “them” being terrorists, which, according to this rationale, have fallen for our clever trap by flooding into Iraq to take on the military, rather than coming over here.

Afghanistan was about capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and chasing away a regime that welcomed terrorists. But the Taliban is back, and the terrorists are thought to be tucked safely away in Pakistan. Afghanistan’s leader, Hamid Karzai, is bluntly critical of the U.S. strategy to win the hearts and minds of his countrymen. President Barack Obama has flown in to try to rally the troops.

We’ve lost thousands of troops in the two wars, and it seems one of the emerging emotional rationales for persisting is to make sure those lives were not lost in vain. It’s as if the wars were troubled assets and the troops are battling to regain their solvency. How many more troops will die in an effort to honor those who have already fallen? Far too many, if you ask me.

The good news is that it looks as if we are seriously drawing down our involvement in Iraq, but the Obama administration seems to be signaling a retreat from its timeline for withdrawal in Afghanistan after tripling the number of troops in the past two years. The urge to make wars mean something is undeniable. Nobody wants to be the commander-in-chief of unjust or unwise wars. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon knew that feeling and couldn’t successfully fend it off. The Vietnam War, in their minds, was too big to fail.

And so that mess dragged on until the public had had enough. Nixon then declared victory and brought the troops home. When will the public turn on the Afghanistan War? It’s hard to say, because most people have yet to feel the consequences. The military is all-voluntary, and no financial sacrifice from the general public has been called for. Indeed, both major parties are currently debating the size of continued tax cuts, not the insanity of refusing to ask Americans to pay for war and other spending.

The sheer dollar amounts of these wars dwarf those of the much-hated bailouts for banks, General Motors and AIG, which the Congressional Budget Office has pegged at $25 billion in its latest estimate. That’s a far cry from the initial estimate of $360 billion for the financial bailouts and the near $1 trillion spent on the two wars.

The tragedy is that the public’s outrage over bailouts doesn’t extend to the much larger ones taking place on foreign battlefields.

Over there. Many supporters of the Iraq War like to point out that there hasn’t been another terrorist attack since the U.S. invasion. That’s all some people need to know to decide whether it’s worth it. So let’s try that logic on airport security. Ever since the advent of the Transportation Security Administration and heightened passenger scrutiny, there have been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Yet, many war supporters are certain that those searches and scans are useless and that profiling is the answer.

The common thread is that if wars and anti-terrorist acts don’t inconvenience “real Americans,” they’re worth it. But if they do, forget it.

Retreating from Facts. The Congressional Budget Office has updated its assessment of the wildly misunderstood federal stimulus package. As of September, the stimulus bill increased employment by between 1.4 million and 3.6 million people. In addition, it has buoyed the number of hours worked and saved many employees from being relegated to part-time status.

The strong job creators and sustainers in the package were direct purchases of goods and services by the feds and payments for Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment benefits. Weak job producers were tax cuts for wealthy individuals and corporations.

Don’t trust CBO? Macroeconomic Advisers has estimated that there would be 2.5 million fewer jobs this year without federal stimulus. Mark Zandi of Moody Analytics and Princeton Professor Alan Blinder put the number at 2.7 million.

But perception – not facts – wins votes. And the perception is that the very things that have worked have failed because we’re still in the midst of a long, hard slog. If that were the measuring stick for our wars, they would’ve ended years ago.