Consider the budget. President Obamas first defense budget, for fiscal year 2010, was $685.1 billion, if we include the supplemental funds for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars (a budget gimmick he had promised not to use.) This was 3 percent higher than in the previous year.
The Obama administration upped the ante again for FY 2011, requesting a base budget of $548.9 billion, plus $159.3 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq, for a total of $708.3 billion. That was before the bombing of Libya, which already has cost some $750 million, Defense Secretary Robert Gates revealed on May 12 at Camp Lejeune, N.C.
Yet, according to the Congressional Research Service, Afghanistan will still cost $113.7 billion compared to the $43.5 billion spent in 2008, President Bushs last year. Iraq will be much cheaper than before, but this decline was already in the works. In late 2008, President Bush signed the Status of Forces Agreement setting the Iraq drawdown in motion. If anything, President Obama has slowed down the withdrawal, and is now petitioning Iraq to stay past 2011. Meanwhile, the stepped-up war in Afghanistan has offset much of the savings we could have expected in Iraq.
And this is just the financial cost. Last year 559 American troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan significantly more than the 469 who died during Bushs final year in office.
As a senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama criticized President Bushs war policies. But instead of changing course, President Obama has tripled down in Afghanistan, widened the war into Pakistan, multiplied the drone attacks, bombed Yemen and Somalia, and started an undeclared NATO war in Libya.
Those who voted for Obama in 2008, expecting a shift in defense policy, must face a sad fact: The United States would have likely spent less money and spilled less American and foreign blood in its wars had the president simply continued on the path charted by President Bush.
Instead, we now have Bush Plus.
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