This past Friday, President Barack Obama announced that by this June, all troops will be withdrawn from Iraq, thus ending a war lasting nearly nine years that accrued a death toll of more than 4,000 Americans.
On Sunday, GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann responded to Obama’s announcement by condemning his handling of the war effort and demanding that Iraq reimburse the U.S. for the cost of the war. In an interview on CBS’s Face The Nation, she explained her reasoning, saying, “To think that we are so disrespected and they have so little fear of the United States that there would be nothing that we would gain from this—that’s why I called on President Obama to return to the negotiating table.”
Iraq’s current GDP is estimated at $65.8 billion, and the cost of the Iraq war to the U.S. is estimated by Brown University to be at $3.2 trillion and counting. Demanding repayment from a country that did not ask to be invaded and whose economy remains in a fragile state is undoubtedly one of the most nonsensical ideas ever conveyed in campaign history.
The repayment Bachmann is asking for is almost 50 times as much as Iraq’s GDP, and such a weight placed upon a country attempting to rebuild would almost certainly crumble its fledgling economy.
Moreover, numbers aside, part of the American principle as a world power is to help liberate countries in need without expecting a return beyond that of global security and social stability. Asking for monetary compensation for interfering with world affairs, especially when the Iraq war was predicated on the American War on Terror, is nothing short of outrageous.
Bachmann’s belief that Iraq and other countries should respect our nation out of fear demonstrates the GOP’s near-medieval outlook on foreign policy and goes to show just how uniformed their party seems to be in this election. Additionally, world opinion of the U.S. is, needless to say, less than favorable, and Bachmann’s suggestion does absolutely nothing to help that image.
As Michele Bachmann continues to stumble blindly through the motions of a campaign, she would do well to remember that her comments are reflected in a national spotlight and serve as a basis of perception through which the rest of the world sees this country, and that perhaps she should think twice before making comments of this nature.
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Your suggestion that Bachmann think twice before speaking erroneously assumes that she thought even once!