Veterans for Common Sense

CLEVELAND (AP) — Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry said Tuesday that President Bush has used the threat of war in Iraq to distract attention from the nation’s economic problems, and he promised to make those issues the centerpiece of his campaign.

“They [the Republicans] sat down in August and made a conscious decision to bring that up and to dominate the discussion with Iraq,” the Massachusetts senator said after making a speech to the City Club of Cleveland.

Let Sen. Kerry know your thoughts: http://www.senate.gov/~kerry/

[Notes: The remainder of the article was deleted, since it related only to partisan politics not related to the war. Sen. Kerry founded Vietnam Veterans Against the War and voted in favor of attacking Iraq.]

AMHERST, Mass. — The idea was hatched on a bright day in August, when Daphne Reed was celebrating her daughter’s and granddaughter’s birthdays, and the talk around the living room sofa turned to war.

Reed began worrying that her 25-year-old grandson, who spent four years in the Coast Guard, might be called to serve if the United States were to invade Iraq. Her family also wondered why the United States was threatening to invade Iraq even before United Nations weapons inspections began. And Reed fretted over the particular suffering that would befall Iraqi women; their sons and husbands would be killed, she said, and the women would be left in the rubble to fend off contaminated water and starvation.

“I said that all mothers should automatically be against war,” Reed said. “It was against their nature to be violent instead of nurturing.” Maybe, she said, it was time to start a movement — Mothers Against War.

Reed’s response is just a tiny part of a growing peace movement that has been gaining momentum and raises the possibility that there could be much more dissent if U.S. bombs begin falling on Baghdad.

The retired Hampshire College drama teacher e-mailed about 15 parents in her address book. Reed reached people such as Elaine Kenseth, whose five children include a son she adopted from the killing fields of Cambodia. Aileen O’Donnell, a veteran of the women’s movement. Joanne and Roger Lind, whose son was a Vietnam War conscientious objector. And Elizabeth Verrill, who had never been involved in political causes. Before long, Mothers Against War had 50 core members, and thousands of supporters around the country and the world.

Most members of Mothers Against War are grandmothers in their seventies whose lives are already full. Yet they spend hours a day on the Internet, reading and spreading information on Iraq and the United States and planning for marches, e-mail campaigns and teach-ins. Having lived through the Vietnam antiwar movement, which took years to build, the Mothers Against War are buoyed to find themselves part of a fast-growing movement of people from every walk of life, from every political stripe.

The extraordinary array of groups questioning the Bush administration’s rationale for an invasion of Iraq includes longtime radical groups such as the Workers World Party, but also groups not known for taking stands against the government. There is a labor movement against war, led by organizers of the largest unions in the country; a religious movement against the war, which includes leaders of virtually every mainstream denomination; a veterans movement against the war, led by those who fought Iraq in the Persian Gulf a decade ago; business leaders against the war, led by corporate leaders; an antiwar movement led by relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; and immigrant groups against the war.

There are also black and Latino organizations, hundreds of campus antiwar groups and scores of groups of ordinary citizens meeting in community centers and church basements from Baltimore to Seattle.

It has reached a point where United for Peace, a Web site started by the San Francisco-based human rights organization Global Exchange for groups to list events commemorating the Sept. 11 anniversary, has morphed into a national network coordinating events for more than 70 peace groups nationwide.

“We’re taking the . . . Web site and rebuilding it as a one-stop shopping for the antiwar movement,” said Andrea Buffa, who co-chairs the new network. “It’s a campaign of all different kinds of groups, from the National Council of Churches to the International Socialists organization; I just got a call from the Raging Grannies of Palo Alto, who want to join. We’re bringing groups together to develop a consensus statement and a calendar of coordinated antiwar events.”

After large rallies in Washington and San Francisco on Oct. 26, the next big day to test the antiwar movement’s might is Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day. Hundreds of groups plan events, rallies and civil disobedience to capture the nation’s attention, including demonstrations in Lafayette Park across from the White House and at a military recruitment center in downtown Washington.

Otherwise, antiwar groups, which tend to rely on the Internet to receive and spread information, operate largely without the attention of the media or Capitol Hill. Yet many of those speaking out against an attack on Iraq represent large numbers of Americans, including John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO (with 13 million members); the National Council of Churches (which represents 36 Protestant and Orthodox denominations, with 50 million members); and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (the leadership arm of 65 million Roman Catholics).

Quietly Organizing

Among themselves, the groups are quietly organizing their ranks. A letter Sweeney sent to Congress in early October expressing deep reservations about the justifications for an invasion has begun to resonate among the rank and file, said Bob Muehlenkamp, a labor consultant and former organizing director for the Teamsters union. Several hundred thousand union members, he said, have signed up against the war, with more joining every week. He expects the numbers to balloon when leaders hold an organizational breakfast meeting for all unions in New York on Dec. 18.

“Union people are the most patriotic of Americans,” Muehlenkamp said, “yet you can’t find all-out aggressive support for a Bush war.” Union members have the same concerns as others opposed to the proposed war, including a belief that the Bush administration has not weighed the economic consequences or made the case for an unprecedented attack, he said. But they have their own concerns as well. “For unions,” he said, “it’s their kids that are going to be doing the fighting. It’s our sons and daughters who could die.”

The National Council of Churches, which includes Lutherans, Episcopalians and President Bush’s denomination, Methodists, is facilitating antiwar events for traditionally liberal institutions and conservative churches, said the Rev. Robert Edgar, its general secretary.

“Average, ordinary people,” Edgar said, “who come from evangelical Christian conservative roots are organizing against the war.” Edgar, who served in Congress as a Democrat from suburban Philadelphia from 1975 to 1987, recalled that he was a freshman Democrat during the last days of the Vietnam War. Even then, he said, he and other lawmakers had to fight to end U.S. involvement. He also remembered that it took the church — meaning most mainstream religious institutions — 12 years to start opposing that war. “Whereas, the threat of war now has even middle churches, not just liberal churches, involved in antiwar activities,” he said.

During its annual meeting last month, the National Council of Churches issued a statement praising the National Conference of Catholic Bishops for reiterating its position against a U.S. invasion. “We thought it was important to acknowledge their important work,” Edgar said.

Now, he said, the National Council of Churches — fresh from its “What Would Jesus Drive?” television ad campaign to promote fuel efficiency — is launching a “Seasons of Peacemaking” campaign, “moving beyond statements to actions. On December 8 through 15, there will be a series of actions across the country.” The biggest day, he said, is Dec. 10, which is significant not only because it is Human Rights Day but also because it is the day that former president Jimmy Carter is to receive his Nobel Peace Prize. “Carter, as an evangelical Christian, represents a great number of people in the antiwar effort,” Edgar said.

Indeed, on that day, religious groups across the country plan to stage mass acts of civil disobedience. Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, founder of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, plans to join church groups in New York and get arrested, he said, for the first time.

“I’ve never engaged in civil disobedience before,” he said. “But if some country was going to do this to us — have a little preemptive war with the U.S., bomb our people, kill or maim people because they thought that at some time we might bomb them, we’d say that’s a war crime. I feel that getting arrested is the biggest statement that I could make to say that what the Bush administration is doing is wrong.”

That day, as well as the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Jan. 18-19, is important for the smaller groups across the country as well. Damu Smith, founder of the Washington-based Black Voices for Peace, said his group plans to begin a poor people’s peace movement similar to the one King was organizing before his murder in 1968. Black Voices is planning its own rallies and forums in Washington, as well as participating in planning national events as a member of the steering committee for United for Peace, he said.

“Before Doctor King died,” Smith said, “he was speaking out forcefully against the United States involvement in Vietnam. He made the point that the money being spent on bombs was money that could never be spent on addressing poverty. We are taking up Doctor King’s legacy.”

While African Americans and other minorities have been underrepresented in some national campaigns, such as the environmental movement, Smith, executive director of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, said that he has had no trouble recruiting against the proposed war. The group, which he began a few weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, in response to a lack of African American voices in the policy debates and newscasts surrounding the attacks, has more than 3,000 members, he said.

Not all are African American. “We get calls from people who say, ‘I’m white, but I want to join your group,’ just as in the civil rights movement. It’s such a shame that the media has not focused on what is happening because there are so many voices working together.”

Remembering Another War

Those who still remember the horrors of the Vietnam War, like the members of Mothers Against War, find themselves connected to this new antiwar movement on a personal as well as ideological level. The other day, as half a dozen core members sat in Daphne Reed’s living room, they remembered friends who had fled to Canada to shield their sons from the military draft, friends who died in the war, and lives forever changed by the war.

Joanne and Roger Lind, 77 and 78, respectively, are retired professors of sociology and social work, whose son received his draft card as soon as he turned 18 in 1965. As Quakers, the Linds were actively working toward peaceful solutions to the crisis, including organizing teach-ins. Their son became a conscientious objector, and did community work, known then as alternative service. “But sons of our friends were not so lucky,” Joanne Lind said. “They served two years in prison.”

Elaine Kenseth, at 59 the youngest of the group, remembered that her friends started getting married in 1964 before finishing school so that their men could be exempt from the draft. “Others left for Canada. They lived there until President Carter created the amnesty for them.”

She became active in helping refugees of the war resettle in Western Massachusetts, and adopted her Cambodian son, when he was 16. “When we say we’re mothers against war,” she said, “we’re also saying we’re mothers seeking peace. We are activists for spreading peace in the world.”

Reed, recalling the four wars she has seen this country involved in during her lifetime, said she is often motivated by a single memory decades old.

She was visiting the nation’s capital, she said, when she saw a man without a face.

“Yes,” she said, “without a face. He had nothing but a plastic mask with two holes for eyes and one for mouth. It still swims before my inner vision, provoking an agony of grief that no one had been able to stop the war that took away that man’s face.”

Within a month of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the first Bush administration launched what became known as “Operation Tin Cup” — a frenzied round of diplomacy aimed at getting U.S. allies to help pay for war with Iraq. As a result, the bill to American taxpayers for the Persian Gulf War was about $7 billion, a fraction of its cost.

Although it is difficult to predict how much Americans would pay for a new war with Iraq, one fact seems indisputable: It will be many times more than the cost of the last war, if only because other countries are much more reluctant to share the burden.

Informal estimates by congressional staff and Washington think tanks of the costs of an invasion of Iraq and a postwar occupation of the country have been in the range of $100 billion to $200 billion. If the fighting is protracted, and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein blows up his country’s oil fields, most economists believe the indirect costs of the war could be much greater, reverberating through the U.S. economy for many years.

The 1991 Gulf War led to a brief spike in oil prices and a fall in consumer confidence that helped tip the country into a recession that cost President George H.W. Bush his chances of reelection. Despite the high economic and political stakes, there has been no equivalent of Operation Tin Cup this time around, and the current administration has refused to engage in public debate about the likely costs of a new war.

“If we can plan a war, we should also be planning a way to pay for the war,” said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “Last time, we were able to slough the costs off on other countries. This time, we will have to absorb most of these costs ourselves. Someone ought to be asking questions about the impact on the budget.”

A White House official, speaking on condition of not being identified, said it would be premature to talk about the costs of a war with Iraq because President Bush has not decided on the use of military force. He added that unofficial estimates of the cost of war had to be weighed against the “potentially incalculable” political, diplomatic and economic costs of permitting Hussein to develop and spread weapons of mass destruction.

Using different methodologies, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and staff for the Democrat minority on the House Budget Committee have concluded that a short, decisive war involving the deployment of 250,000 U.S. troops could cost between $44 billion and $60 billion. This is significantly less than the cost of the 1991 war, which came to nearly $80 billion in 2002 dollars, reflecting the fewer numbers of troops involved. A protracted war, by contrast, could cost upward of $100 billion.

The direct military costs of a new war will likely be less than in 1991 under most scenarios, but the postwar occupation costs will be considerably greater, most experts believe.

In Kuwait, most U.S. troops were able to pack up and go home in a few weeks. In Iraq, a large international military presence will be required for many years to provide security for a post-Hussein government and avert a civil war between ethnic factions, which include Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center and Shiites in the south.

“It’s a no-brainer that this is going to cost us more than the last time,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a military economist at the Brookings Institution. “In addition to the nominal price tag for the operation, you will need a large stabilization force in there for a number of years. Anything else will not be strategically viable.”

Extrapolating from similar peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, O’Hanlon estimates that the United States is likely to initially spend between $15 billion and $20 billion a year for its share of a multinational stabilization force for Iraq. Depending on how long the stabilization force remains in Iraq, the cost to the American taxpayer could be between $50 billion and $100 billion. His calculations are based on an assumption that U.S. allies will pick up two-thirds of the cost of the stabilization force.

Adding the costs of a stabilization force to the costs of an invasion brings the total to between $100 billion and $200 billion. This is in line with an upper-bracket estimate by White House economics adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in September. The White House subsequently distanced the administration from Lindsey’s comments, saying they were not based on any official study.

If the war costs between $100 billion and $200 billion, it would still be relatively inexpensive in historical terms. Because of the growth in the U.S. economy, wars are getting cheaper, at least to the American consumer. In a $10 trillion economy, the cost of a second Gulf War would be between 1 percent and 2 percent of the nation’s annual gross domestic product, compared with 12 percent for the Vietnam War, 15 percent for the Korean War and 130 percent for World War II.

Measured against a federal budget of about $2 trillion a year, the cost of the war would be proportionately larger: between 5 percent and 10 percent.

“You have to ask yourself where would that money come from,” said Spratt, who represents the pay-as-you-go philosophy in Congress. “While the costs of the war are clearly not beyond our means, they are beyond our budget. Remember, this all comes at a time when we are losing control over the budget.”

In 1991, U.S. taxpayers paid about 12 percent of the military costs of the Gulf War, with the remainder of the burden being shared among such countries as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Germany and Japan. This time around, none of these countries is expected to contribute significantly.

Iraq could be expected to assume major responsibility for the long-term costs of its economic reconstruction out of increased oil revenue. But the country has been devastated by two decades of war and economic sanctions, and cannot pay for a U.S.-led invasion and military occupation.

The generosity of the allies was “exhausted” by the first attack on Iraq, said Chas Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Riyadh who helped raise $16.8 billion from the Saudis to pay for Desert Storm. He added that the Saudi government would find it politically impossible to pick up a substantial portion of the costs of a new Gulf War even if it had the money, because the Saudi public is “now 100 percent against an attack on Iraq.”

Freeman says the U.S. government grossly underestimated the costs of the 1991 war by excluding various services provided free by the Saudis. These included the costs of housing and repatriating Kuwaiti refugees, the provision of free fuel, transport and lodging to coalition forces, and a major environmental cleanup. In a future conflict, many of these costs will be borne directly by the United States.

The most uncertain cost of the war, economists agree, is the impact on the broader U.S. economy. Such costs are difficult to quantify. William Nordhaus, a professor of economics at Yale University, estimates the indirect cost of the 1991 conflict with Iraq at about $500 billion, many times larger than the official military price tag. Depending on what happens in a future conflict, the macroeconomic impact of the war could be between zero and $1 trillion, according to his estimates.

“I was surprised to discover that the nonmilitary costs are likely to be much larger than the military costs,” he said.

A recent conference by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies considered three scenarios for a war with Iraq. The benign scenario, the probability of which was estimated at 40 percent to 60 percent, envisaged a decisive victory for allied forces in four to six weeks and no disruption in oil supplies. Under this scenario, oil prices would likely come down in the aftermath of the war, boosting the U.S. economy.

A worst-case scenario (5 percent to 10 percent probability) envisaged fighting for three to six months, massive political unrest in the Middle East, terrorist attacks against the United States and large-scale damage to Iraqi oil facilities.

An intermediate scenario (30 percent to 40 percent probability) included limited damage to oil facilities, major urban warfare and fighting for up to three months. The intermediate and worst-case scenarios would have “serious adverse effects” on the U.S. economy, according to Laurence H. Meyer, a former Federal Reserve Bank governor now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The worst-case scenario would likely lead to a global recession.

Nordhaus said U.S. wars have almost always gone over budget. The Civil War was 13 times more expensive than the worst-case forecast of Abraham Lincoln’s treasury secretary. Similarly, in early 1966, the Pentagon underestimated the likely cost of the Vietnam War by about 90 percent.

Recent studies suggest that even a successful military campaign in Iraq could carry a hefty price tag

“It seems likely that Americans are underestimating the economic commitments involved in a war with Iraq,” says William Nordhaus, an economics professor at Yale University.

Given all the imponderables surrounding such a war, it is surprising how many experts (like Mr Nordhaus) are trying to work out how much it might cost. After all, it is not clear whether Saddam Hussein’s grip will crumble or if he might use weapons of mass destruction.

And it is anybody’s guess whether OPEC countries will replace any lost Iraqi production—or might slash output in a general Arab boycott.

The findings of the most ambitious effort to date, undertaken by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, an American think-tank, were unveiled this week in New York.

Over the course of the past few months, CSIS has tapped experts from various fields to try and quantify the likely impacts of war.

First, the group’s military and geopolitical gurus defined four likely military outcomes: no war; a benign war that lasts four to six weeks; a thornier intermediate option that lasts up to three months; and a “worse” case that drags on for as long as six months. The group intentionally set aside still worse possibilities, such as the use of nuclear weapons.

For each of these options, oil-market analysts convened by CSIS speculated over the likely path of oil prices. Their predictions were then fed into macroeconomic models that took into account the positive inputs, such as higher government spending, as well as the negative ones, such as higher inflation.

They also factored in the role of market psychology, recalling the experience of the 1970s when oil shocks were accompanied by hoarding and panicky behaviour.

The group reached some striking conclusions. For a start, the no-war scenario is not necessarily the best for the economy. That is because lingering uncertainty about a possible war will continue to depress markets and add a risk premium that boosts oil prices and acts as a drag on growth. At the other extreme, if things turn ugly, the team predicts that oil prices could spike up to $80 a barrel and, more damaging in economic terms, stay at around $40 for many months thereafter.

In the end, though, the group’s assessment of the cumulative cost of war to the end of 2004 is not overly alarming: about $55 billion in the benign scenario, and around $120 billion in the worse-case scenario. (The higher numbers in the table below are for a whole decade.)

The Congressional Budget Office and a committee of the House of Representatives have also done some sums, and both came up with estimates of $50 billion-60 billion for a shortish war. The Gulf war cost about $80 billion in today’s money, although much of that was recouped by contributions from Saudi Arabia and other allies, which are not likely to be repeated this time. Even so, America can afford all the scenarios.

Some even suggest that the war could be an economic boon. Most wars in America’s history have—thanks to massive government spending on defence—tended to stimulate the economy. A notable exception to that, however, was the Gulf war, which was followed by recession. Even so, say some extreme imperialists, if Saddam Hussein is ousted, then America will be able to turn Iraq into its own private pumping-station. Private or not, higher Iraqi output would mean that oil prices would drop for a while and America’s economy (along with other oil-consumers’) would benefit.

Larry Lindsey, a top economic adviser to President George Bush, made precisely this argument recently: “When there is a regime change in Iraq, you could add 3m-5m barrels of production to world supply…successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy.”

The snag in this rosy plan is the dilapidated state of Iraq’s petroleum infrastructure: oilmen say it would take 5-10 years for Iraqi output to reach such unprecedented levels (even assuming a post-Saddam Iraq would actually want to flood the world market with oil). Mr Lindsey offered an even more cheerful forecast: he estimated that even a prolonged war would not cost more than $100 billion-200 billion, or about 1-2{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of America’s GDP.

What’s the worry, then?

Hang on a minute, says Mr Nordhaus, who argues in the latest New York Review of Books that none of the recent analyses of war goes far enough. In general terms, he agrees with their estimates for the direct military costs for the various scenarios. But he insists they underestimate the long-term costs to America from an Iraqi war.

He points to the high costs likely to be incurred after a military victory is secured: eg, in peacekeeping, reconstruction and nation-building. Mr Bush has openly committed America to rebuilding Iraq after ousting Mr Hussein. By examining international experience in post-war Kosovo, East Timor, Haiti and other recent cases, Mr Nordhaus estimates that such non-military costs could reach $600 billion if a liberated Iraq turns out to be more like the West Bank than Kosovo.

He also worries that an Arab boycott or some other political factor could keep a significant share of OPEC oil off the market for many months. And that, of course, would mean higher oil prices, higher inflation, lost economic output, and so on.

All told, Mr Nordhaus thinks that even an Iraqi invasion that went well would probably cost about $120 billion in today’s money over the next decade—and one that went horribly wrong could end up costing a whopping $1.6 trillion.

The estimators differ in the purpose, methodology and sophistication of their analysis. But, taken together, recent prognoses point to one conclusion: even a short war will prove fairly costly, while a messy one could deal the economy a severe blow.

Mr Bush has often stressed the possible price—in terms of national security—of not going to war against Saddam Hussein. These studies suggest that he should start preparing Americans for the economic costs of going to war as well.