If the US public has been suckered into supporting the liberation of Iraq, then the big question is, how far are they prepared to go, and are there limits to that support? .....William Nordhaus estimated prior to the war that the first Gulf War damaged about $250 billion worth of Iraqi infrastructure; for both wars the costs of reconstruction to bring Iraqi infrastructure back to pre-1980 levels will be in the ballpark of $500 billion, and this is not including the costs of occupation, or of reparations for the first Gulf war. All in all, the US taxpayer could be looking at a total price tag of as much as a trillion dollars, spread out over 10 to 20 years. .....

The vision of Iraq as a shining beacon of democracy and prosperity in the Middle East is likely to remain just that, an illusion. I think Juan Cole nailed it when he said that the best scenario that can be reasonably hoped for is if Iraq turns out similar to the way India is now: corrupt, inefficient, flawed, but reasonably democratic, reasonably multicultural, and reasonably peaceful.

This is the best case scenario, and it's going to take between half a trillion to a trillion dollars to achieve it, an amount that the US taxpayer is largely going to have to bankroll alone. Given that this was not a deal they signed up knowingly for, unlike the West Germans, how much will they collectively stomach? How deep will they reach into their wallets before they say "Enough is enough", and vote in a new administration on a platform of withdrawal from Iraq? And what happens to Iraq in such a case? (My guess: look at Iran).

It's easy to dismiss such concerns .... Unfortunately, liberation does not always bring a better future with it. Forty years after liberation from the British, oil-rich Nigeria has suffered a terrible civil war, numerous lesser insurgencies, decades of brutal military dictatorships, a few years of corrupt civilian governments, and the end result is that, sad as it may be, the standard of living of the average Nigerian is now lower than it was at independence. The collapse of the Soviet Union led not to prosperity in Russia, but the exchange of crony socialism for the worst kind of crony capitalism, and a drastic decline in living standards for Russians not fortunate enough to be part of the incrowd when the looting of State-held institutions commenced under Yeltsin.