Iraq Revisited

Of all the deplorable things that the Right has done, none has been more loathsome and damaging than its incessant attempt to rewrite history. Throughout most of 2009 and 2010 Republicans desperately tried to convince the public that the Great Depression was brought about, not by a lack of government regulation and intervention, but by a plethora of wasteful and meddlesome government spending that prevented the private sector from doing what it does best: create jobs.

Only the advent of World War II got us out of the depths of that depression. It mattered not that not a single economist has gone on record to validate such hogwash, just saying it made it so, as far as the GOP was concerned. I don’t suppose it would do any good to remind conservatives that the build up to that War, whether they want to admit it or not, counts as government spending, meddlesome or otherwise.

It was the same with the causes of the 2008 recession. Forget all you’ve heard about derivatives and sub-prime mortgages, according to conservatives, the real culprits were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac forcing all those helpless bankers to loan money to poor black people who knew they couldn’t afford a mortgage in the first place. Not doing it for you? Well then how about all that nasty debt due to wasteful government spending? How about a combination of both? Facts? Why concern yourself with such trivial things as facts when it’s so much easier to pull nonsense out of your ass and peddle it as truth?

Well, as strange as it might sound to those of us who actually bother to fact-check such stupidity before falling for it, the electorate bought in lock, stock and barrel. Whether out of sheer frustration, a lack of commons sense, or a combination of the two, a majority of people polled now believe that the Great Recession of 2008 was due in large part to excessive government spending and needless regulation of an industry that was running just fine without a hitch. Go figure.

And now comes the greatest obscenity of all: the Iraq War. With this monstrosity of an endeavor now coming to a long overdue end, the final price tag has far exceeded the trillion-dollar mark, and that’s not counting the impact it had on the economy. In fact, according to Joseph Stiglitz, the total cost for both the Afghan and Iraqi Wars is over $3 trillion. Granting that our involvement in Afghanistan was just, given the 9/11 attacks, that still leaves the sixty-four thousand dollar question: why did we get involved in Iraq? If you thought the Right’s explanation of the causes of the Great Depression and Great Recession creative, you won’t believe what they have to say for themselves regarding Iraq.

Source: https://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/08/iraq-revisited/