Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

Later LBJ [speaking to Valenti about this conversation]: “I’ll win this election, but he’s right about one thing. If I pass my civil rights bills, which I intend to do, the Democratic Party will have lost the South.” LBJ’s estimate of Senator Russell’s forecasts was eerily prescient. LBJ did win the election, but he was the last Democratic candidate for president to win a majority of white male voters in the South. From that election on, the South has moved steadily toward the Republican Party. . . . [In the South] the color of the political map is Republican red.38

Just as Johnson wanted to reform the system at home to make it fair, his policies in conducting the Vietnam War were based on the same equality norms. He raised taxes to pay for the war so that its costs would less endanger his social programs. Likewise, he sought equality in terms of who did the fighting. Posing the question “Who serves when not all serve?,”39 he argued that the existing draft system meant the disadvantaged in society disproportionately fought America’s wars. With social justice in mind, he reformed the selective service system—the draft—so that the burden of fighting fell more evenly across society. Laudable as his interest in promoting equal treatment was, whether in voting rights or in serving the nation in wartime, Johnson’s policies proved politically disastrous, as he readily could foresee. His draft reforms, especially the lottery system, imposed the costs of Vietnam squarely on the backs of his political supporters. These supporters objected and turned against the war. Ultimately, they deserted him, resulting in his decision not to engage in a futile pursuit of reelection in 1968.

Bush’s Agenda: Reelection

BUSH DID NOT MAKE JOHNSON’S MISTAKE. HE, LIKE LBJ, EXPRESSED A willingness to sacrifice his presidency in order to fulfill his policy goals. Woodward reports on a conversation between Bush and senior members of his team in which the president declared, “I am prepared to risk my presidency to do what I think is right.” And “it could cost the presidency, I fully realized that. But I felt so strongly that it was the right thing to do that I was prepared to do so.” Bush also stated, “I would like to be a two-term president, but if I am a one-term president, so be it.” Yet, although he also said that he would be “fully prepared to live with it [losing the presidency],’” unlike Johnson, he fought his war in a way designed to minimize such an eventuality.40

Despite the enormous economic cost and loss of life, the war in Iraq imposed relatively few costs on Republican backers. His supporters, typically drawn from the wealthier elements of the US population, were relatively unlikely to serve in Iraq and, if they did so, then they did so by choice. Further, rather than having to pay for the war, on average Bush supporters saw their taxes fall and their prosperity rise. Certainly, cuts in benefits and social programs hurt the poor under this administration. But the political reality is that the poor didn’t vote for Bush anyway. Many would argue that the rise in the nation’s indebtedness, decline in infrastructure, and growth in economic inequality left the United States weaker at the end of Bush’s rule than at its beginning. But again, those who make these arguments were not, by and large, Bush supporters. His backers would remain loyal, reelecting him in 2004. Near financial collapse and recession in 2008 undermined W’s popularity with his core constituencies, putting his reputation at risk, but by 2008, late in his second term, it didn’t matter. He was, after all, term limited anyway. Just how differently Presidents Bush and Johnson distributed the costs of war is central to resolving why Bush managed reelection following an unpopular war and Johnson felt compelled to step aside during an equally unpopular war. We turn now to the detailed evidence of how differently these two presidents distributed the burden of war.

The Costs of War

POLITICIANS HAVE A COMPELLING INTEREST IN UNDERESTIMATING THE cost of any war they intend to fight. Equally, they have a compelling interest in misleading the public—especially in a democracy—about the true costs of war as it unfolds. Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush were alike in this regard, although, as the next section makes clear, they were radically different in how they chose to pay the costs of war. Just what do wars like those in Vietnam and Iraq actually cost? A recent report by the Congressional Research Service provides the answer.

Both Vietnam and Iraq were hugely expensive. In 2011 US dollars, the Vietnam War cost $738 billion. In its peak year, 1968, the cost of the war was equivalent to 2.3 percent of GDP (gross domestic product), with total defense spending reaching 9.5 percent of GDP.41 By the Congressional Research Service’s accounting, the overall cost of the US intervention into Iraq is remarkably similar to the cost of Vietnam, $784 billion, with spending in Iraq having peaked at about 1 percent of GDP in 2008. Others argue that the real cost of Iraq is far higher: in an April 2008 Vanity Fair article, for instance, Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, together with Linda Bilmes, argues, taking into account additional military spending, veterans’ benefits, and economic losses, that Iraq is “The $3 Trillion War.”42

To put the costs of Vietnam and Iraq in perspective, Figure 5.3 shows us defense spending in the United States since the end of World War II. We have shaded blocks of years during which the nation was involved in war, including Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, and Iraq, as well as the period of Ronald Reagan’s cold war armaments buildup in the 1980s. Obviously there are difficulties in directly assigning all the military spending to a particular war. As the numbers we just mentioned show, in 1968 Vietnam War spending accounted for only a quarter of US defense spending. Likewise, Iraq cannot account for all US defense spending as the war on terrorism and the US occupation of Afghanistan started in 2001 and overlapped with the Iraq War. Yet, the patterns are unmistakable. US involvement in Vietnam and Iraq created steep spikes in US defense spending. In the long run, guns can only be purchased at the expense of butter.

Figure 5.3. US Defense Spending (in 2011 US Dollars and as a Percent of US GDP)

Sources: http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2015/FY15_Green_Book.pdf and http://www.bea.gov/national/. The area shaded as Vietnam is 1964–1970, the term of major US troop deployment.

LBJ was sensitive to the “guns vs. butter” tradeoff. He realized that spending on the Vietnam War jeopardized his ability to get Congress to pass and fund his Great Society legislation. He used many dubious accounting practices to keep estimates of the war’s true cost as low as possible. These cooked estimates undoubtedly contributed to the credibility gap that Johnson accumulated as his term unfolded. For instance, Califano reports, “As early as August 20, 1965, the President had written himself a note: ‘McNamara’s got to find ways to drag his feet on defense expenditures.’ Pressed by LBJ, McNamara got the defense budget down to $60.5 billion, by arbitrarily assuming that the war would end on June 30, 1967, the final day of the fiscal year.”43 All politicians seeking authorization for war want to downplay the potential cost. Remember, for instance, how quickly the Democrat-Republicans in Congress turned on their ally, Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, for his estimates of the cost of the War of 1812, estimates that with hindsight turned out to be extremely conservative. Comparison to that war is perhaps more pertinent than one might think. In terms of a percentage of GDP, the peak of the 1812 conflict cost about the same as Vietnam; 2.2 percent in 1813 and 2.3 percent in 1968.44