War wounds

You can say the Iraq War was wrong. You can say it was expensive. You can say the money spent on it could have been better spent elsewhere or not at all. But you can't say the war helped ruin our economy:

Just for grins, use the above chart to dissect Christopher Hayes' statement that our current and future deficits are caused by "three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession."

Two of those three things -- the wars and tax cuts -- were in effect from 2003 through 2007. Do you see alarming deficits or trends from 2003 through 2007 in the above chart? No. In fact, the trend through 2007 is shrinking deficits. What you see is a significant upward tick in 2008, and then an explosion in 2009. Now, what might have happened between 2007 and 2008, and then 2009?

Democrats taking over both houses of Congress, and then the presidency, was what happened. Republicans wrote the budgets for the fiscal years through 2007. Congressional Democrats wrote the budgets for FY 2008 and on. When the Democrats also took over the White House, they immediately passed an $814-billion "stimulus." (The $814 billion figure is from the same CBO report as the Iraq War costs. See sources at end of article.)

The sum of all the deficits from 2003 through 2010 is $4.73 trillion. Subtract the entire Iraq War cost and you still have a sum of $4.02 trillion.

Lots of other facts and figures in the article, including this one: During the JFK-LBJ years, 1961-69, 46 percent of all federal spending was on national defense, and it was around 8-9 percent of GDP. During President Bush's eight years, defense didn't even reach 20 percent of federal outlays, about 4 percent of GDP.

(From American Thinker, via Instapundit.)