Inflation -- the good, cosmic kind

A group of physicists says it has direct evidence of how the universe expanded immediately after the big bang.

Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second.

Not only does this provide confirmation of current thought, it provides an opportunity to consider some really cool questions. For example, during the expansion the universe grew many, many times faster than the current speed of light. Does that indicate that the universe itself is not subject to the same laws of physics that hold sway *within* the universe? It also refocuses attention on questions like "what's outside the universe?"

If pondering imponderables fascinates you, this provides a lot to chew on.

physics, universe, big bang, midtopia

Expensively mediocre health care

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, every American -- regardless of gender or ethnicity -- gets roughly equal routine medical care.

Other studies have shown evidence of racial disparities in treatment, and this study doesn't totally refute those. There are still disparities in access to some kinds of specialized care, and the methodology doesn't really address barriers to seeking care in the first place. But once people sought care, they were treated generally the same.

The real kicker, though, is that that the care was rather uniformly mediocre.

The study ... found that though there are some disparities, the world's most affluent health system fails to provide all patients with optimal care at least 40 percent of the time.

"Differences exist, but they pale in comparison to the chasm between where we are today and where we should be," said chief author Dr. Steven Asch of Rand Health and the Veterans Affairs Health Care System in Los Angeles. "No matter who you are, it's almost a flip of the coin as to whether you get the care that experts want for you."

We spend more money per capita on health care than any other nation on earth. And what do we get? Mediocrity.

There are many things wrong with our health-care system beyond the skyrocketing costs. Most reimbursement systems end up giving bizarre incentives to health-care providers, driving up overall costs. And it simply makes no sense that the cost and quality of health-insurance coverage depends on one's employment status. Not only is that bad policy from a public health perspective, but increasingly it is a competitive disadvantage to American businesses and a barrier to hiring, constricting employment and economic growth.

It is time we seriously considered alternatives.

People talk about health-care rationing, but the alternative to rationing is exploding costs -- which eventually leads to rationing by ability to pay. Perhaps exploding costs would be acceptable if we were getting top-of-the-line care for all that money, but we're not.

Should nationalized health care be on the table? Sure. I don't think it's the best alternative, but it's arguably better than the system we have now.

Worried about a huge new bureaucracy? Right now we're subject to a private medical bureaucracy instead of a government one.

National health care limits choice and results in long waiting lists for non-emergency procedures? Well, all systems have their problems. I just don't see the logic in trying to boast about our system and bash every flavor of national health care out there. None of the systems are perfect; they all represent different attempts to address the cost/benefit ratio.

Say what you will about national health care on an individual level, but on a macro level it seems to keep the population pretty healthy at reasonable cost. And it's not at all clear that waiting lists are an inevitable result of a single-payer system.

But rather than looking at the extremes, I think the more useful discussion would be "is there a combination that provides maximum choice while reducing costs appreciably?" And if we can de-link health insurance coverage from our employment status, so much the better.

I actually agree in large part with the Heritage Foundation on this, especially their assessment of the problems with the current system. We may quibble a bit on the details, but their system is workable and, with a bit of residual government involvement, equitable.

My solution would look like this:

Instead of employers providing insurance, they simply boost your pay by the current premium amount, and you go out and buy coverage yourself. Tax credits help ensure that the money is spent on health care, and that the very poor can afford health care. Future increases are left to the market: the cost of health care becomes just one more factor that workers consider when weighing a salary offer.

Medical costs would automatically become linked to performance, insurance products would become more closely tailored to individual needs, you wouldn't lose your insurance coverage when you lose your job (or be forced to change doctors when you switch jobs), and employers would no longer be locked into ever-higher medical premiums -- eliminating a growing barrier to hiring. Small businesses -- the engine of economic growth -- could compete for the very best workers who might otherwise go to large companies simply for the cheaper, better health coverage.

There would still need to be some government involvement, to ensure adequate coverage for people with very expensive medical problems that a true market system, without the "group" aspect of coverage, would lock out. There might have to be a law requiring that everyone have health insurance, much like we do with car insurance. But overall you'd have better coverage and better care without a new bureaucracy deciding what each individual medical procedure is worth.


health care, politics, midtopia

What to do about Iran

After several years of fixating on Iraq, the Bush administration is finally waking up to the nuclear ambition of Iran.

Some observers argue that a confrontation with Iran may be politically helpful to Bush, giving him a chance to demonstrate leadership and regain some of the lost luster on his security credentials. But there are a lot of little things that will probably prevent it from rescuing his reputation.

Any confrontation with Iran will point up:

1. How much of our military capability is tied up in Iraq, leaving us unable to do much more than saber-rattle against real threats;

2. How much Bush ignored Iran in the last several years;

3. How passive Bush has been even in recent months, letting the Europeans take the lead in dealing with the problem.

So what can we do?

Our policy begins with an unwavering bottom line: Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. It's not just that they've signed the nonproliferation treaty; treaty or not, we would be foolish to let unstable states get nukes, and Iran grows more unstable every year.

However, we have to recognize Iran's legitimate interest in civilian nuclear power. A lot of people scoff at the idea of an oil-rich state needing nuclear energy, but they miss three points:

1. When the oil runs out it will run out for everyone, including suppliers;

2. As the price of oil climbs, every barrel of oil not used domestically is another barrel that can be sold for hard currency;

3. There may be remote places where it's more efficient to build a nuclear plant than run a pipeline or transmission towers.

As far as options, we begin with negotiations, of course. The basic outline of the Russian offer -- providing closely-accounted-for nuclear fuel to Iran, so that Iran does not enrich any of its own -- is a good solution. Iran has some legitimate complaints about sovereignity, but they mostly lost the right to complain about that when they were caught redhanded with an illegal enrichment program. If they want civilian nuclear energy, there will be serious strings attached.

What happens if we fail to reach a diplomatic solution?

Invading Iran just isn't going to happen; it would be plain stupid. Iran doesn't pose much offensive threat, but they could shut down shipping in the Persian Gulf at least temporarily, and I wouldn't want to dig a few hundred thousand infantry out of those mountains. Never mind what China or Russia might do, or how much further we'd inflame the Middle East by knocking over yet *another* Muslim country -- this one full of Shiites, our erstwhile allies in Iraq.

Besides, we don't have enough troops to provide security in Iraq, population 27 million. How are we going to occupy Iran and its 70 million?

We can try sanctions, but sanctions alone are unlikely to solve the problem. And our experience in Iraq was that strict sanctions hurt the populace far more than it damaged Saddam.

If it comes to the last resort, the best way to deal with nuclear ambitions is through coercive, muscular inspections, backed by the *credible* threat of force:

Step 1: Establish a credible independent inspection regime under international auspices (not necessarily UN, but something that makes it clear this is not a U.S. operation).

Step 2: Get the inspectors in the country, with free access and the right to conduct unannounced surprise inspections. Part of the negotiations may well include "Let the inspectors in and give them free access or we will destroy anything we think is a nuclear facility." Then do so if they try to call our bluff.

Step 3: Once they're in, be consistent and deadly serious about enforcing their access. "Let the inspectors into this facility *right now* or we will bomb it" may be one tactic. Then do so if they try to call our bluff.

We won't necessarily find everything, and some facilities may be both hidden or buried so deeply that bombs can't reach. But that's okay. A nuclear weapon isn't something you can build in your basement. You need enrichment facilities, fabrication facilities, testing facilities... all of which leave a reasonably large footprint. Sufficiently intrusive inspections will make building a bomb prohibitively difficult and expensive.

bush, nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

A truly radical federal budget

The Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative GOP lawmakers, today released their version of the 2007 federal budget, titled "Contract with America: Renewed."

Their budget would cut the deficit by $358 billion over five years, compared with $60 billion in Bush's budget. But as you might imagine, the devil is in the details. Their proposal is a mixture of solid ideas and conservative fantasies.

NEUTRAL IDEAS

Increase defense spending to match Bush's request for 2007. Defense spending shouldn't be sacrosanct, but adequate funding is a must. Reserve judgement on this pending a detailed look at where the money goes.

Eliminate the Mars initiative and the space shuttle program. The Mars program is great, but not the way it's being funded: by gutting everything else NASA does. If the Mars mission doesn't come with extra money, it should die. The space shuttle needs to be retired, but we should have its replacement in hand before that happens.


BAD IDEAS

Gut foreign aid. This is a huge mistake. The war on terror demands *more* foreign aid spending, not less.

Dept. of Energy. Eliminate federal funding for energy conservation research, and arbitrarily cut the department's size by 35 percent. In an era of high oil prices and searches for alternatives, this makes little sense.

Interior and Agriculture. Arbitrarily cut the size of the Depts. of Interior and Agriculture by 10 percent and impose a wide variety of cuts in environment and natural resource programs, including eliminating the Energy Star program (that logo that lets you know if you're buying an energy-efficient appliance).

Transportation. Eliminate Amtrak and mass transit subsidies and transfer a whole bunch of responsibilities to the states, including railroad safety and regulation and (the biggie) highway construction spending. Eliminate the subsidies that maintain the U.S. merchant marine. Privatize the FAA.... Dumping funding on the states merely shifts responsibilities. Maintaining the merchant marine is a security issue. Privatizing the FAA would harm its regulatory function.

Deep cuts in education spending. Eliminate the Reading Is Fundamental program and programs to encourage learning a second language -- this at a time when a shortage of foreign-language speakers is hampering our security efforts. Freeze spending for Head Start. Eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities and cut the Dept. of Education by 30 percent.

Health. Cut National Institute of Health budget by 10 percent, eliminate family planning programs and turn Medicaid and SCHIP into a block-grant program -- cutting $36 billion a year from it in the process, largely by capping spending increases without regard to actual need.

Aid to the poor. Save $13 billion a year by arbitrarly restricting eligibility for Section 8 housing (cutting the number of vouchers in half) and eliminating heating-bill assistance for low-income households. Again, arbitrary cuts that evince no concern for the impact of those cuts.

Social Security. Doesn't touch Social Security at all. This may be politically expedient, but even minor tweaks -- raising the eligibility age and lowering the income limits for benefits, for example -- would save huge amounts of money.

GOOD IDEAS

Agriculture. Cut lots of subsidies and programs at the Dept. of Agriculture. The whole agricultural subsidy structure could be thrown overboard and the country would be better off for it.

Medicare. Cut $63 billion a year from Medicare, by raising premiums and means-testing benefits. This is a reasonable approach and politically courageous. But they also propose limiting cost increases to a percentage point below medical inflation. Hospitals and doctors are already reluctant to take Medicare because it pays so little; this will just make that worse.

Legislative reforms. They advocate a line-item veto, earmark reform, strict sunset provisions on most federal programs, a discretionary spending cap and restoring pay-as-you-go provisions. All of those are excellent ideas. Which raises the question: "why aren't they already in effect?"

Bad programs. One of the strengths of the document is specifically identifying a lot of wasteful or useless programs that could be eliminated. Doing so usually doesn't free up a great deal of money, but it should be done on principle. Of course, people will disagree on what's wasteful or useless. I would recommend establishing a bipartisan committee whose sole job was to eliminate bad programs. Objective criteria would be used whenever possible; a committee vote could settle more contentious cases, with a tie meaning the program lives.

Once you read the budget, you can see why they didn't trumpet the specifics. Budget cutting, of course, will require pain, and they do have some good ideas; but by ignoring defense and Social Security and heaping the cuts on social programs and other conservative pet peeves, they undermine their credibility. It's a start, but it's only a start.

Technorati tags
deficit, budget, politics, midtopia

Redistricting revisited

As a follow-up to my earlier post about redistricting, here's one idea for how a fair redistricting plan would work.

6. Each district shall be as contiguous as compact as practicable. With respect to compactness, to the extent practicable a contiguous area of population shall not be bypassed to incorporate an area of population more distant.

a. Respect for contiguous and compact districts shall be secondary to the goals of representativness and competitiveness.

7. District boundaries shall conform to the existing geographic boundaries of a county, city, or city and county, and shall preserve identifiable communities of interest to the greatest extent possible. A redistricting plan shall provide for the most whole counties and the fewest county fragments possible, and the most whole cities and fewest city fragments possible. For the purposes of this section, communities of interest are defined by similarities in social, cultural, ethnic, and economic interest, school districts, and other formal relationships between municipalities.

They also suggest forming large, multirepresentative districts out of (for example) three individual districts, and then electing the top three votegetters. That way you get fair minority representation without having to gerrymander individual districts.

Couple this with instant-runoff voting and you'd go a long way toward making elections fair, competitive and representative.

Technorati tags
elections, texas, supreme+court, redistricting, gerrymandering, civil rights, politics, midtopia

Is terror a military or a criminal problem?

Is terror a military or a criminal problem?

Therein lies the conundrum at the heart of the ongoing debate over how best to fight terror while protecting civil liberties.

Terror, at base, is a criminal offense. It is nothing more than a crime with political motivation. Terrorists represent no country, have no fixed geographical boundaries. They are a collection of individuals bound only by their beliefs. The metaphorical "war" on terror is just that -- a metaphor, like the "war" on drugs or poverty.

But the military has a role, too. First and simplest is when a terror group receives state support, as in Afghanistan; then fighting terror shades over into conventional war until such time as the state support ceases. If terrorists resort to a guerrilla war, that too is a military responsibility -- although with limitations peculiar to antiinsurgent operations. The rest of what I would call the "hard" side of fighting terror -- Striking known terrorist training sites, killing terrorist leaders and the like -- also are more properly a military task than a police task.

But this leads to confusion about what, if any, rules apply. There are laws that govern warfare and there are laws that govern crime and they are very different, both in what they allow and in their scope and purpose.

Laws that govern crime are geared toward the long term -- minimizing, catching and deterring criminals instead of trying to eliminate them. They assume that the problem will be with us always, and come up with ways to keep it under control while still respecting the rights that are important to a free society. Call it a "chronic condition" approach.

Laws that govern warfare envision certain fixed and rigid limitations -- that there is a front line, that there is a conflict between nations wielding uniformed armies, that there will be an easily defined point of victory. War is a temporary national emergency, with a clearly defined battlefield within which rights do not exist: laws of war spring from agreements between nations, not the text of the Constitution. Call it an "emergency surgery" approach.

The problem with the assumptions behind "emergency surgery" is that none of them are true when it comes to fighting terror. There is no front line, no nation, no uniformed armies, no easily recognized victory, no clearly defined battlefield, and the conflict is expected to last a very long time.

Precisely because it is ill-fitted to the task, there are tremendous dangers in treating terrorism entirely as a military concern:

• Erosion of civil liberties;
• Incarcerating minor "combatants" for years or even decades regardless of the severity of their actions;
• A heavy cost in lives and treasure;
• Erosion of popular support at home and creation of more enemies abroad;
• An overreliance on force that, in the long-term, will be less effective than legal, diplomatic and intelligence efforts.

Criminal law, then, is better suited to the problem that terrorism poses. Accepting that, the question becomes how to define the respective roles of the military and law enforcement.

I'll go through them from easiest to hardest.

1. In a clear civilian situation, such as breaking up a terror cell in Chicago, law enforcement rules apply. That means warrants, probable cause and due process.

2. In a clear battlefield situation, such as someone captured during a firefight, military rules apply. However, prisoners captured in such cases must be dealt with in specific ways (see below).

3. U.S. citizens deserve due process and access to the courts in nearly all cases.

4. Civilians caught in the middle of an insurgency, a la Iraq, should be accorded as many rights as possible. They can be detained by the military for short periods for security reasons, but within a reasonable time (a week, say) must either be charged as an "enemy combatant", turned over to civilian police for nonmilitary charges, or released.

5. Anyone defined as an "enemy combatant" should have the right to challenge that designation. Most such cases would be a slam dunk ("suspect was caught during a firefight"), but they should get a hearing. This is not "normal" wartime practice, but this is not a normal "war".

6. "Enemy combatants" can only be held until the end of the specific war they were involved in. To be held longer, they must be charged and convicted of actual crimes. Insurgents captured in Iraq, for example, must be released when the fighting in Iraq ends unless they can be linked directly to terrorism.

7. Because some insurgencies may last a very long time, we should make an effort to categorize insurgents by the threat they pose. The truly dangerous would be locked up until the insurgency ends; minor players would be released after serving shorter sentences. That way you're not locking up a halfhearted foot soldier for decades. Like with any offense, recapture would result in a much harsher sentence.

8. In areas where we are not in charge, we will strive to work with the ruling government. But if the rule of law is weak or nonexistent -- Think Yemen, for example -- or the ruler is not a reliable foe of terror, we reserve the right to kill or capture proven terrorists whenever we can. This is less a military/civilian issue than a diplomatic one; I include it here for completeness.

There are a few specific steps we should take to make this happen:

1. Congress should make clear that we are not in a war in a conventional sense, so the President cannot claim extraordinary inherent authority. If they wish to grant him specific authority in specific places, they can do that, giving him broad powers to operate in Iraq or other places abroad. But we should not fall into the "war" trap a second time.

2. Congress should clearly state law enforcement's pre-eminence, and outline which laws apply in which situations.

3. We should clarify the warrant rules to ensure that showing a reasonable suspicion of terror links will allow eavesdropping -- but that such a link *must* be shown.

4. We should stop trying to keep certain prisons or prisoners outside of any law, be it U.S., international or the Geneva Conventions. All prisons and all prisoners should be protected by one of those sets of law.

5. We should allow open inspections of our prisons by accredited organizations such as the Red Cross.

6. We should ensure adequate funding for antiterrorism investigations, and if necessary create specific terror-related charges that guarantee lengthy prison terms for true terrorists -- whether their planned attack is successful or not.

Saying terrorism is primarily a law-enforcement issue is not "going soft" on terror -- it is recognizing that the nature of terrorism is more effectively addressed by criminal law than military law. A vigorous enforcement effort -- backed by a limited but vigorous military role -- will defeat terrorism more surely, and at less cost in both money and civil liberties, than if we allow the "war" metaphor to rule our thoughts and actions.

Technorati tags
terrorism, civil rights, Iraq, civil liberties, politics, midtopia

Why Iraq is a hideously expensive distraction, Part II

Today, for better or worse, Iraq is the central front of the war on terror.

Should it be? This is the second of two articles looking at the terror threat and the Iraq experience through a cost/benefit lens.

Part II: How big is the terror threat, and what should we do about it?

How much would you pay to avoid a 0.0000008% chance of dying?

It's not an idle question. When allocating limited resources, the first step has to be defining the risk. We spend a lot of money researching cancer cures because cancer kills millions of people every year. We spend almost no money researching a cure for mucopolysaccharidosis, which usually kills its victims by age 25 but only affects about 200 people nationwide. That stinks if you're one of the 200, but it makes perfect sense to spend more money on the biggest threats.

Such analytical methods were developed because, quite frankly, people suck at assessing risk. We tend to overemphasize the danger of rare but spectacular events and minimize the danger of common incremental events. That's why more people fear flying than fear driving, even though driving is many times more dangerous.

What happens if we apply the same logic to terrorism?

One way to measure the danger posed by terrorism is to compare the risk of dying in a terror attack to other causes of death in the United States.

Since 1990, there have been four major terrorist attacks in the United States: Oklahoma City, the first Trade Center attack, the Olympic bombing in Atlanta and 9/11.

That's four attacks in 14 years; hardly a crisis. Further, half of those attacks were the work of disgruntled individuals, unrelated to any broader terror movement. And they come against the background of a steady 20-year decline in the number of terror attacks worldwide. Attacks have increased in lethality and spectacle, but there are fewer of them.

Now let's look at casualties. Those four attacks caused roughly 3,175 deaths over 14 years, in a population of about 300 million. That's an average of 230 deaths a year -- far closer to mucopolysaccarhidosis than cancer. Put another way, the average American has a 0.0000008% chance of dying in a terror attack in any given year.

If you look at causes of death in the United States you'll find that terrorism is right up there with such national crises as falling from a ladder (406 deaths in 2002), drowning in your bathtub (352 deaths), riding a "special agricultural vehicle" (149 deaths) and "overexertion, travel and privation" (128 deaths). Heck, on average more people accidentally shoot themselves to death (243) than die at the hands of terrorists.

Put into perspective, terrorism isn't even close to a national threat. It does not threaten our national survival, and it does not threaten the life of average Americans in any meaningful way. One could plausibly argue that our response to terrorism has done more damage to Americans than terrorism itself. 9/11 killed 3,000 people and caused several billion dollars in economic damage. Our response has killed even more people and cost $400 billion, all of it borrowed. The terrorists could only dream of inflicting as much harm on us as we have inflicted upon ourselves.

Of course we still have to combat terrorism, and of course our response should be outsized; we don't just passively accept the murder of American citizens. And there are psychological and economic aftershocks from spectacular stunts like 9/11. But by any measure our response has been way out of proportion to the risk.

So how much effort should we put into fighting terrorism? That requires an honest national debate, but I think critics of the Iraq campaign had it right: terror is better handled as a law enforcement and intelligence matter than as a military one. Not only would that be more effective, it would be far cheaper.

When clear targets are identified, military force can be beneficial: the campaign in Afghanistan is a prime example of that. But the military clearly should play a supporting role, not a starring one. We are better served keeping our soldiers available as a credible deterrent and to fend off true threats to national survival.

So what works? In Part I, I explained why the "war on terror" justifications for Iraq are nonsense. Instead, I think four broad strategies offer the most chance of success:

Go after the terrorists directly. Continue the ongoing effort to boost our intelligence-gathering abilities, so we can root out terrorist cells and choke off terrorist financing. This includes the less noxious parts of the Patriot Act, allowing law enforcement and intelligence communities to share information. We also need to hone our strike and raid capabilities so that we can effectively act on the intelligence we receive.

A homeland focus. If they can't get in, they can't attack us, so the bulk of our anti-terror money should go to domestic security - ports, airports, borders, etc. Such spending pays other dividends as well, tightening the defenses against smuggling and illegal immigration. This category includes investing in alternative energies, mass transit and conservation, because reducing our reliance on oil (and especially foreign oil) will reduce our need to become enmeshed in volatile regions of the world, as well as reduce the political influence of oil-rich countries.

International cooperation. Work with foreign intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to infilitrate and destroy terrorist cells. Work with foreign militaries to spread the burden of military operations. Isolate and destroy regimes that are active supporters of terrorism, using a clearly-drawn definition so that every nation is aware which side of the line they are on.

Foreign aid. It does no good to kill terrorists if we don't change the conditions that generate them: oppression, poverty, hopelessness, lack of education, lack of opportunity. We spend a paltry $18 billion a year on foreign aid; we should double or triple that number and target it on areas and issues related to terror. This means ending support for repressive regimes in the Middle East and devoting money to promoting education, democracy and opportunity in the region. Even if we spend $50 billion a year on foreign aid, it would be cheaper than the staggeringly expensive war we're currently pursuing. And you get a lot more PR benefit out of building schools than you do from dropping bombs.

Technorati tags
terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Why Iraq is a hideously expensive distraction, Part I

Today, for better or worse, Iraq is the central front of the war on terror.

Should it be? Is Iraq the best way to spend our anti-terrorism resources? Is it making the situation better, or worse?

There is no question that we have a responsibility to the people of Iraq. Having destroyed the previous regime, we must establish a (preferably democratic and secular) government capable of ruling the country. But fixing Iraq and fighting terror are two separate objectives.

This is the first of two articles looking at the terror threat and the Iraq experience through a cost/benefit lens.

Part I: Fighting them over there instead of over here, or "What is a terrorist, anyway?"

As it relates to the war on terror, our invasion of Iraq has often been billed as "fighting terrorists over there instead of over here." But is this true?

To answer this question, we need to first define "terrorist." That word is grossly overused, confusing the issue of who we're fighting and why.

In Iraq and globally, I see three kinds of opponents:

Terrorists: These are the people behind 9/11 and other actual terror attacks -- Al Qaeda and its ilk. They are the relatively few people with the skills, money, patience, imagination and access to pull off attacks inside the United States.

Jihadists: These are people who dislike us but have limited opportunities to act on that dislike. Our invasion of Iraq has both swelled their ranks (thanks to outrage over Western/Christian occupation of a Muslim country) and provided ample opportunities to do something about it: It's far easier to slip across the porous Iraqi border and take potshots at U.S. troops than it is to get into the United States itself to launch an attack.

Insurgents: These are native Iraqis who are fighting us as occupiers, for whatever motive. They were not terrorists before we invaded, and most of them weren't jihadists, either; Saddam Hussein did not take kindly to freelancers.

Having defined our opponents, how does that apply to Iraq?

The U.S. military says 90 percent of the insurgency is native Iraqis. Right off the bat that tells us that most of the people we're fighting and killing in Iraq were not serious opponents until we invaded.

How about the remaining 10 percent that are foreign fighters? Are they terrorists?

Few people think so, and logic suggests why. Would a true terrorist -- the kind who can plan and pull off spectacular attacks inside the United States -- drop everything and head to Iraq to fight well-armed, well-prepared soldiers? Of course not. To think so you have to assume terrorists are stupid, and they're not. True terrorists will just keep on doing what they're good at: planning new and bigger terror attacks.

On the other hand, if you're a jihadist angered by the invasion of Iraq, would this be your golden opportunity to act on your feelings? Of course.

So that's whom we're killing in Iraq: native insurgents and low-level foreign jihadists, most of whom would never have shown up on our threat radar if we hadn't invaded Iraq. And in exchange for the opportunity to create enemies that need killing, we're helping to train and radicalize an entire generation of Middle Eastern men.

Meanwhile our military is overstretched. By being tied down in Iraq it is unavailable to deal with real threats, or to serve as a credible threat of force. Iran isn't exactly quaking in its shoes at the prospect of U.S. intervention, for example. What would we invade them with -- a Reserve public affairs battalion?

As far as the war on terror is concerned, then, Iraq is worse than a distraction: it is actively making things worse.

Then there's the cost. Thus far Iraq has cost more than $200 billion. So it's not just a distraction, it's a hugely expensive one.

Some people argue that Iraq isn't about terror, it's about spreading democracy. Fine; I can support the idea that we should knock down dictators and free oppressed peoples. But that raises a requirement and a question:

You have to be up-front about it. The invasion of Iraq was sold under the banner of the war on terror. If the administration had said "hey, let's spend $200 billion to knock over Saddam because he's a bad guy and we need to free the Iraqi people", they would have been laughed out of town.

How much are we willing to spend to do so? There are 27 million Iraqis. That means we've spent $7,500 per head so far bringing them democracy, never mind the cost in lives and damage to Iraqi infrastructure. The final total will be far, far higher. Democracy is valuable, but not infinitely so given limited resources. How much are we willing to spend? How many more Iraqs can we afford?

Technorati tags
terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia