As we creep towards the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a sovereign nation that posed no threat to us, the question of why we are still there has yet to be answered. Most likely it never will, unless you follow the no-bid contracts and oil company profits being reaped there. These were the only true winners in the war, at least on the American side. The losers undoubtedly were the American people, specifically tax-paying citizens and the troops.

We all know our national debt has steadily grown over recent years, and now we face the prospects of higher taxes and reduced social services. The hidden cause of this is the American war machine, which receives more national government spending every year than China and Europe combined. Some of the more "enlightened" readers may be thinking "but military spending only takes up 20% of the national budget, about as much as Social Security or Medicaid and Medicare." At best this is misleading, and at worst it is a lie.

The most obvious reason this is not true is the fact that theoretically Social Security revenue should be independent of national revenue. When you see a Social Security tax on your paycheck that is separate from the federal income tax, it is because the former should be placed in a trust that does not get touched by the government. Unfortunately that changed with the Vietnam War, when politicians and the war machine  started dipping into our social safety net to finance its wars. So even though Social Security is taking a portion of national spending roughly equal to the military every year, it is because of misleading practices by the national government.

The misleading of the American public does not end there, though the fact that Social Security is included in all budget estimates makes them unreliable. In addition to military spending there is paying for veterans benefits from past wars ($94 billion) and also the interest on the national debt. The War Resisters League estimates that 80% of the interest on the debt (excluding the principal, mind you) comes from spending on past wars, totalling $484 billion, amounting to 18% percent of the national budget. It doesn't end there, either. The national government estimates that the "Global War of Terror" costs about $32 billion annually. This estimate all but ignores the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is most likely much higher. The United States holds about 21 percent of the world's GDP, yet accounts for 47 percent of the world's total military spending.

While oil companies reap record profits and the military-industrial complex (General Eisenhower's term, not mine) are thriving, working Americans and our troops are shouldering the burden. Public education is being gutted and privatized accross the country, and in many states spending on prisons (America's other great modern industry) has eclipsed spending on higher education. Don't worry though, becaues prisons are also being heavily privatized as states are strapped for resources. We all know the state of health care in this country, too. The lowest estimates of the cost of the war in Iraq (not including Afghanistan) is that it costs $470 million per day (Stiglitz estimates $700 million). New York State's recent education cuts, which will hurt schools for years to come, was $470 million. This is indefensible.

To all the geniuses out there who want to say I am against the troops, I say this: wake up. Soldiers are coming back traumatized for no good reason, and some are exhibiting severely anti-social behavior because of medication they have been given to cope with the stresses of war. The troops should come home tomorrow, because no one knows why we're there anymore. It's not to fight terrorism, and it's not to build democracy (if it were why don't we build democracy in Saudi Arabia, or better yet a better one here in the United States?). If you believe the troops should remain in the Middle East, you are against them, not me.

Of course, the big winner in all this, other than oil companies and weapons corporations, is Osama Bin Laden. He shocked the most powerful country in the world on 9/11, and now he has humiliated us by showing how predictable empires are. He drew us into wars that we simply cannot win, and now he has recruiting tools and coherent arguments to sustain his holy war for a generation. The best thing we could have done for him was engage in a long, drawn-out occupation of the Middle East, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process. Bin Laden outsmarted George Bush, and there's nothing Obama can do about it. If we withdraw, Bin Laden can claim victory. If we stay, his war continues. We should cut our losses and leave, because we can't afford this anymore.