The costs of conflict: Always the great unknown

The one-page handout dated Sept. 5, 2000, is as much an artifact of history as a 48-star flag or a CIA briefing paper about Soviet plans to invade Western Europe.

Entitled "Bush Budget 2001-2010," it summarized the Republican presidential candidate's fiscally responsible plans for the projected $4.6 trillion surplus. After safeguarding the $2.4 trillion earmarked for Social Security, the outline explained how it would be possible to fund all of George W. Bush's priorities, including a $1.3 trillion tax cut, while still leaving a $265 billion surplus. Perhaps the most mind-boggling figure was the bare-bones estimate of the planned increase in Defense spending over the entire decade: $45 billion.

The president's partisans probably believe that it is unfair to even mention this comically optimistic campaign document. The combination of the Sept. 11 tragedy and the unanticipated depth and duration of the economic downturn would have undermined any budget projections. Moreover, they might argue, all presidential candidates indulge in a taffy-pull approach to budgetary truth when they are on the campaign trail.

These outmoded budget numbers from Campaign 2000 are not being brandished as a weapon in the wearying fight over Bush's current round of proposed tax cuts. This is not the moment to dwell on the upbeat budget forecasts that were used to justify the passage in 2001 of the president's original tax-reduction plan. For those wedded to the belief that tax cuts are always an elixir for an ailing economy and record budget deficits are a minor inconvenience, such a walk down Memory Lane is unlikely to prompt a divorce from prior convictions.

Still, it is sobering to read the latest fiscal analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, which predicts deficits of at least $100 billion every year for the next decade. This depressing red-ink forecast does not include Bush's latest tax-cut proposal, let alone the costs of waging war in Iraq or the price of postwar reconstruction. These days, the administration will not even hazard a guess at the war-related expenses. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Tuesday that these costs are "not knowable because it is not like the demographics of a known universe like Medicare. It will depend on the duration of the fight."

Fleischer is right: Even the best military minds cannot forecast with certainty the duration of a war with Iraq. That is why Fleischer's phrase "not knowable" is telling. Just 30 months ago, the Bush team was wrong to the tune of something like $6 trillion in predicting the budgetary outlook for this decade.

For all our collective arrogance, we are constantly blindsided by something called the future. Humility about our ability to predict, let alone shape, a recalcitrant world should be kept in mind on the eve of war.

The president's news conference last Thursday night was studded with a series of unprovable assertions on how things would play out in the Persian Gulf if we invade Iraq. They are the assumptions that undergird American policy, and they are worth re-examining at this perilous moment.

Bush's core argument is that Sept. 11 changed his strategic thinking about how to protect America. Now that the unthinkable has occurred, it is, of course, impossible to cavalierly dismiss any threat. But there is a little-discussed question of probabilities. What is the precise short-term risk posed by Saddam Hussein? For all the administration's determined efforts to establish firm ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda and to verify the existence of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program, these remain pessimistic interpretations rather than unquestioned fact.

Radiating certainty, the president declared, "The price of doing nothing exceeds the price of taking action, if we have to." Dick Cheney used almost the same words in a speech last August threatening unilateral action to achieve regime change in Iraq. This is the ultimate cost-benefit analysis. But the danger of war lies in its unpredictability. No one knows for sure whether it will be over in five days or American soldiers will become bogged down in bloody street fighting in Baghdad. Will all of Saddam's stocks of chemical and biological weapons be captured or will some disappear in the chaos?

This week, the administration is again signaling that there might be a small degree of flexibility in its timetable for war if a brief waiting period would aid in assembling a Security Council majority endorsing military action. But Bush at his news conference expressed the underlying American position: "More time, more inspectors, more process, in our judgment, is not going to affect the peace of the world."

It seems likely that France, Germany and perhaps Russia will never accede to an attack on Iraq, regardless of provocation. War critics have also yet to make a convincing case that enhanced inspections are capable of disarming Saddam. But it is worth asking: Why did Bush go to the Security Council last September if he ultimately was determined to invade without a U.N. mandate? It can be argued that all Bush achieved with six months of diplomacy is to widen the rift with our European allies and to jeopardize the future effectiveness of the Security Council. If diplomacy was from the beginning only envisioned as a fig leaf to cover unilateral action, then this cynical bit of camouflage appears to have been exposed.

Even so, even in these anxious final days, there is an irrepressible urge to hope for a miraculous event, such as a coup in Baghdad, to prevent war. For it is emotionally hard to believe that we are so close to this final reckoning. The road ahead, as inevitable as it seems, remains fraught with such unknowable consequences.

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