There is a silver lining in the Iraq war cloud. After spending almost $400 million thus far at a cost of nearly 3500 U.S. military lives with no end in sight after four and a half years, it’s easy to name the numerous ways that the war has been bad for America. But what about the ways it’s been good for the country? Mind you it’s a silver lining in a very large and foreboding storm cloud, but still a lining nonetheless.

1. Sensitized the population to the very real risks, costs and dangers of going to war. The relative ease with which the U.S. won our battles over the last 25 years has made it seem to the general population that going to war was about as risky as going shopping. In 2000 only 12.7% of the adult population had ever served in the military in some manner. This has been declining dramatically since 1980 when veterans made up almost 18% of the adults. Nobody knows the true cost of war like a veteran, whether they were in combat or not. The more veterans there are in the country, the less likely the country will mobilize itself for war without a clear compelling reason. We just created a whole new batch of veterans who understand very well what war is and educate those around them just by living their lives.
2. Decreased the likelihood of war with Iran. I believe the Bush administration’s original long term plan, sketchy though it may have been, was to develop democracy and a friendly Arab ally in Iraq which could serve as a launch point for future military operations into Iran. Had Iraq gone in accordance with the wishful thinking the administration uses in lieu of actual planning, Iran would have been effectively surrounded on three sides (Iraq, Afghanistan, & the Persian Gulf) by American forces. This would’ve given the administration considerable leverage in which to try to bring about regime change which probably would have developed into outright war. Iran has a strong sense of national identity going back thousands of years, very rugged and mountainous terrain almost four times the size of Iraq with nearly three times the population, and a battle-seasoned military that has credible and homegrown ballistic missile capabilities that can strike far into Europe. War with Iran would make the Iraq war look like a lazy evening stroll.
   
3. Demonstrated that ideology is neither a strategy nor a capability. The presidency has always been a bit of a jobs program for the those who knew the winner well. This is not unexpected nor necessarily a bad thing. Good leaders bring their best people with them. Unfortunately President Bush has defined “best” as loyalty to him and his ideology rather than on capability or experience when selecting people for key positions. Even worse, he appears to evaluate their performance more on their ideological loyalty than their actual success. This has led to a rash of poorly conceived or poorly executed strategies over the past several years of which Iraq is only the most prominent example. Think FEMA, Justice Department, Defense Department, Veterans Affairs, World Bank, Coalition Provisional Authority, etc.
4. Added credibility to future threats of war. We all know the person who is constantly making empty threats. At first you take them seriously but after a while you realize that the person never actually throws the punch and is nothing more than a paper tiger. We also all know the ones whose threats everybody takes seriously because they’ve acted on them before. Even Saddam, despite his experience with the Americans during Operation Desert Storm, still believed until the final weeks before the war “that the United States and the United Kingdom lacked the stomach for war” and that the Americans “would not fight a ground war because it would be too costly.” It has been extremely costly but I think it’s fair to say that U.S. threats are taken far more seriously now.
5. Stimulated for the American economy in the short term. Back in January 2001, the Congressional Budget Office projected that percentage of the GDP spent on defense would actually shrink from 3% to 2.7% by 2006. As a result of the Iraq war and the Global War On Terror, defense spending has risen to 4% of GDP. Perhaps you’re thinking, “So what?” Ok, let’s put it in real terms that anybody with a wallet can understand. Since 2001, the U.S. has poured over 530 billion more dollars into the economy via defense spending than originally planned in 2001. Those are inflation adjusted dollars too. Since defense spending largely goes into American companies due to the nature of the industry, it has likely done a lot to minimize the economic impact of the burst tech bubble and the 9/11 attack. A lot of manufacturers, and by extension their employees, have drank mightily from the government spigot for the past five years. This doesn’t even begin to count the rest of the increased government spending on homeland security, intelligence, other ballooning budgets. A recent economic analysis report suggests that the benefit to the economy is short-lived though and will become a burden after five years. We may have funded all that spending with a spectacularly huge amount of foreign-owned debt, but when you’re searching for silver linings, you have to look at very dark, dense clouds.