Recently this commentary discussed the cost of war. Since that time, the quantification of our involvement in Iraq has changed quite a lot. Now, we are told that the war has cost somewhere between 300-billion and 400-billion dollars, and that about a trillion has been committed to that engagement.

Of that amount, we know that over 9-billion dollars was “lost.” (One could bet that someone damn well knows where it is.)

The National Priorities website has done a great job of keeping a running tabulation of the cost of the Iraq war in dollars. At that site one can not only see the dollar amounts as they add up, but compare that with the costs of at-home programs that could have been funded with the money. For example, we could have hired over 5-million school teachers.

The Social Security System, the educational system, and health care could all have benefited. The number does not take into account the cost of the war in Afghanistan.

Let’s take a look at what we have bought with the money. In Iraq we have purchased the deaths of over a couple of thousand Americans. We have also plunged the country into what amounts to civil war, a war that could well be won by Iran sympathizers. We have also bought an international loss of confidence in our policies. One thing we have not done with the money is take good care of our own troops.

What we have not bought is more security. Americans are now becoming a little more savvy about Moslem politics, and know that the former Iraqi government had little in common with, nor sympathy for Osama Bin Laden. Certainly we would have done well to concentrate on capturing terrorists. So far as we can tell, most of the leaders and plotters captured have been captured by law enforcement, not the military.

What we have also not bought is security for Iraqi oil. When the war was started, we were told that it would be ultimately paid for by a self-sustaining Iraqi economy, driven by oil. The oil isn’t flowing. One would think that for 312-billion dollars the U.S. could have secured the oil fields and transportation in that small country. Instead, oil prices around the world have been steadily driven upward, in part by our taking Iraq oil out of the mix.

Next, we must look at what we have bought in Afghanistan. We have created a country that is producing more heroin than the world can consume. We have also bought American deaths there, and a growing insurgency that could, at any time, plunge that country back into chaos.

Have we established Democracy in the Middle East? Hardly? Even our attempts at the establishment of a Democratic government in Iraq have resulted in nothing more than a sharply- divided theocracy.

The national debate in the United States seems to center on whether we should continue our effort as it is in Iraq, or pull out. Those are not the only options. Why can’t we do what Israel just did; get in there and get what we want, then turn it over to the United Nations to clean up the mess. Let’s secure the oil fields as an international treasure, then turn the rest of Iraq over to the U.N. to prevent a civil war. We can not simply pull out and sail home. We have created too big of a problem now to abandon that country in this way. We can go back to the table with the U N and try to work out a sharing of the responsibility for securing and reestablishing Iraq.

This is not a time to fight over whether going into the war was the right decision. We are there. It is time, however, to stop the endless bleeding in the bottom of our economic bucket, and halt this run away spending on a no-win war. We should proclaim that it is okay not to be in favor of what we are doing there right now. This is partly because we are not sure any one is quite aware exatly what we are doing there right now. It would not hurt to introduce the concept of diplomacy to the current administration and see if they can get any kind of a grasp on the idea. In the meantime, America is about to go broke. Iraq may just assure that happens.