Submitted by Mark Haag, Jul 20, 2007 11:59

First Kudlow claims that the market, rather than behaving "rationally," ie, responding to underlying economic conditions, uses its economic might to make statements about foreign policy. Then, with nary a single iota of real proof, he claims that traders are motivated by a very specific and utterly questionable assumption, that their personal safety hinges on maintaining our current force levels in Iraq.

If that's how today's free marketeers make their policy choices, one can only wonder how they survive, economically. For this way of thinking the problem is, not to mince words, just remarkably dumb. The current situation in Iraq is nothing other than an incubator for terrorism. It inflicts unspeakable horror and ubiquitous death on the Iraqi people; it puts American soldiers in an indefensible situation, dooming many of them to gruesome wounds or worse. The suggestion that Petraeus' plan is "working" is a joke; all it's done is shift the killing from one part of Baghdad to other parts of the city (where most of the vicious work of ethnic cleansing has already been completed anyway) or other parts of the surrounding regions.

Yet it is true that there has been a marginal improvement in security as a result of the "surge." What that tells us is that security for Baghdad is tied to overall troop strength levels. Thus if we really wanted to secure all of Iraq, shut down the civil war completely, make the country totally inhospitable to foreign terror agents, we would have to "take and hold" all of it, the whole place, from Kurdistan to Basra. Gen. Petreus himself, before his career move up the ladder to in-country Commander, made quite clear the committment that would be required to accomplish total security for Iraq -- an additional half a million US troops, minimum. If our neocon warriors were serious about "winning' this war, they'd be telling us about the necessity, and the means, and the Total War resources we should be dedicating to the effort. They'd be telling us about the additional million soldiers we need, about the absolute necessity of reinstating the draft, about where we're going to come up with the money to pay for it all.

But no, Kudlow seems almost smugly content with an inadequate status quo, a situation in which our soldiers can't win, will continue dying and suffering horrible injuries, while out on the margins of the situation AQ lurks about, trying to take advantage of the chaos (whether or not it's 'in contact' with Bin Laden being largely irrelevant at this point) . If Kudlow and his trader pals are so convinced that their own safety and brilliant prosperity are dependent on "winning" Iraq -- well, never mind the conundrum of how one "wins" a civil war in a foreign country, ie, how we could "win" by promoting Shi'a against Sunni or vice versa - no, we'll put that aside for a moment. If Kudlow and his trader pals want to tie the fate of the market to the fate of the "surge" directly, why aren't they willing to pay a war tax to cover the additional resources that would be required to finish the battle totally, once and for all, saving US soldiers' lives in the long run? You'd think they'd realize what a wise investment that would be, since they're supposedly so convinced that their portfolios might suffer without a "win" in Iraq .

I can only add that I would find it hard to characterize the type of disaster we apparently face, tragedy or farce?, should it turn out that we will have failed in Iraq precisely because the people who claimed to see most clearly what the stakes were (ie, Kudlow and his warrior-traders) were just too stupid and too stingy to pay for the victory they said they wanted so desperately.

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