Gregg Easterbrook

The Obama Administration wants a new corporate tax to support the Superfund program, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently said she backs the idea. Monday, New York City received a major Superfund designation. San Francisco is expected to receive one soon.

What is Superfund? A “temporary” federal program enacted 30 years ago on an “emergency” basis. Its original purpose long since having expired, Superfund lives on.

Superfund is an object lesson in how government programs simply never end. A thousand years from now at the Mare Erythraeum on Mars, the city of New New Orleans will be demanding “temporary” Superfund money.

An actual program that worked

Until the late 1970s, federal law and most state laws did not regulate the disposal of toxic waste – the result was leaking chemicals at Love Canal, New York, Times Beach, Missouri, and other places. In response, in 1980, Congress passed the Superfund statute to finance toxic-waste cleanups. Promoted as an emergency measure that would be on the books only a short time, Superfund proved an effective tool, stabilizing then cleaning up dangerous leaked wastes.

Simultaneously, regulations of the late 1970s through mid 1980s imposed tight controls on the disposal of toxic chemicals, preventing new Love Canals from occurring. Combined, these actions represent an argument that government actually can solve problems.

Endangered species saved by toxic waste

Lots of Superfund-classified locations — where there were minor spills — are still on the EPA’s list, but by around 1990, the worrisome sites no longer imperiled public health. In 1991, the National Research Council found the toxic threat from old waste sites largely concluded, while also finding that the risk to public health was limited to a few locations, usually from toxics leaking into drinking water.

Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado, where the Army once made nerve gas, was considered the most dangerous waste site when Superfund began. The area became so clean that since 1992 it has been a National Wildlife Refuge. Endangered species saved by toxic waste? Only in America!

But programs never, ever end

Though the Superfund emergency concluded two decades ago, the “temporary” law remains on the books, albeit without its own corporate tax since 1995. A Superfund tax on petrochemical manufacturers expired that year; the levy is what Pelosi wants to revive.  Revenues would not be used to pay down the national debt, rather, to make grants to communities.

Essentially, Superfund has become a backdoor means of awarding money to local governments in places that voted for whichever party is in power – that’s why New York City and San Francisco are scrambling for Superfund cash before Washington gets reshuffled yet again. Newtown Creek in New York does indeed need a cleanup, but is not a toxic threat to public health, what the Superfund law was about. And in any case, why should the federal government pay for cleanup of water pollution that New York State residents caused? In cases like this, Superfund is just a political cookie jar.

The Superfund law is an exemplar of the “temporary” government program that remains in operation long after its purpose has been fulfilled. Spending money for the sake of spending money has become the law’s rationale.

Aren’t toxic wastes causing cancer?

Cancer rates are in decline, probably in part because regulators cracked down on toxic wastes in the 1970s. The epidemiologist Devra Davis, author of the terrific 2002 book “When Smoke Ran Like Water”, which chronicled the impact of postwar pollution on public health, has estimated that Americans’ exposure to artificial toxic substances peaked roughly in the 1960s, then began to decline as regulations took effect. That exposure decline is mirrored at least in part in the current cancer decline. (“In part” because the causes of cancer are still not fully understood.)

What happened to “the poisoning of America?”

Once toxic waste sites were said by the media to represent a super-ultra menace. This 1980 Time cover proclaimed “The Poisoning of America.” Because the toxic-waste problem has been solved, we’re all still here. Yet Superfund soldiers on, with most of today’s journalists seeming not to know what it is.

When Pelosi proposed new Superfund taxes, press reports seemed to reflect a false assumption that there’s still a toxic waste emergency. That is surely what environmental fundraisers hope you will believe.

Toxic waste scares are a political tool

In 1996, President Bill Clinton used data from the Superfund locations inventory to declare, “Ten million children under 12 still live within four miles of a toxic waste dump.” Sounds like the sort of thing that justifies a massive government program. The statement was true but hollow, since most waste sites had long since been stabilized and posed no threat. And you might as well say, “100 percent of children live within 50 feet of deadly chemicals,” since all houses contain some compounds that are deadly if you are exposed to them. Exposure to toxic waste has ended, at least in the United States. The “temporary” Superfund program marches on.

Superfund status can backfire

The unintended consequence of the 1980 law was creation of the “brownfields” problem – no one will redevelop old industrial land. Superfund imposes “joint and several liability,” meaning any one party using Superfund land is liable for what all other parties may have done. This has been one factor driving industry out of U.S. urban areas – you’d be nuts to purchase old industrial land, knowing tort lawyers will appear the following day and demand payments for past mistakes you had nothing to do with.

Leadville, Colorado, where chemicals washing out of mine tailings once threatened drinking water, years ago cleaned up its worst problems and has been fighting to get “delisted” as a Superfund area. Leadville might gentrify, but not till the Superfund stigma, and its liability, are gone. One reason the problem still isn’t solved is that some Colorado history societies – run, surely, by people who do not live in Leadville — are demanding the piles of toxic tailings be preserved.

But isn’t it good that the federal government helps even if the cleanups are minor?

Because Superfund evolved into a complex lawyers-and-courts-driven program, the recent pace has become glacial. Maryland just asked for Superfund designation for two sites, neither of which pose any known threat to health.

Superfund designation would require “six to seven years” of federal studies. Cleanup? “Actual cleanup… could take several decades.”  Why then is Maryland filing? The state hopes to win about $20 million to spend.

Try to name a government program that ended

Superfund did a fine job on its initial, valid objective. Now it’s a boondoggle. If Congress lacks the courage to end this program, how will any form of spending ever be controlled?

Elizabeth Warren, just appointed a special advisor to President Barack Obama for consumer protection, says we are witnessing the “death of the middle class.” Slate’s Timothy Noah, a terrific writer and thinker, believes the rich are running away with the country. This new Census Bureau report, showing a nearly 5 percent decline in middle-class household income, received banner-headline treatment, with news stories suggesting typical people are being clobbered.

Middle-class life is the soul of the American experiment. Are things really so bad?

All the angst is focused on pretax income — not after tax.
Stated in today’s dollars, median household income was $45,000 in 1985, peaked at $52,500 in 2000 and is $50,000 now. (Absurd precision such as the “$46,269” median for 1991 doesn’t appeal to me.) Nearly all the decline from $52,500 to $50,000 has occurred since 2007 — that is, during a recession. Most likely that loss will bounce back.

But the key point is that the numbers in the Census Bureau report, and in nearly all alarmism about the middle class, are pre-tax income.

Federal income tax rates for the middle class were cut in 2001 and again in 2003. Because of the cuts, in 2000, 29 percent of American households paid no federal income taxes; today, 44 percent pay none. The result is that slightly lower middle-class incomes are being taxed less — and all that matters to the individual is buying power. The Tea Party crowd, which claims taxes are rising, doesn’t like to talk about the reality that taxes are falling. (Tax cuts, not spending increases, are the main reason for rising deficits.) The left doesn’t like to talk about after-tax income — only pre-tax numbers are used, because they’re the only numbers that are disturbing.

After-tax and adjusting for consumer prices, middle class household income is about the same today as a decade ago. That’s not fabulous — but it’s also not the emergency being claimed.

The angst also ignores rising benefits.
A generation ago, about 30 percent of Americans lived in a household where at least one member was drawing federal benefits — now 48 percent do.

In his important new book Rebound, Stephen Rose shows that when middle-class tax cuts, very low inflation, declining real-dollar prices in sectors such as food and electronics, and most of all rising government benefits are taken into account, most middle-class Americans are slightly better off than a decade ago. Nearly all are substantially better off than their parents.

Who is Rose, some Fox News apologist? He’s a labor economist at Georgetown University and a lifelong lefty. Rose has been taking a beating on the hard left for refusing to toe the party line. His work deserves wide attention.

Ever-rising federal benefits may be good or bad for the country’s fiscal management. In most cases, they smooth out income trends for the middle class, leaving most households about where they were previously. Warren, in my experience, doesn’t like to talk about rising benefits, because this subject undercuts alarmism (which can be used to rationalize more benefits).

Federal benefits to typical people are about to take a huge leap.
The new health care rules will function like an income-redistribution plan. The well-to-do will be taxed more, with the proceeds used to reduce health-care costs for average people. This is defensible as social justice. But it sure doesn’t jibe with the trendy notion of average people being shafted by the affluent: the Obama health care legislation represents a fantastic victory for average people over the affluent.

What if we’d done things differently?
Those who believe the middle class is being destroyed generally have two policy prescriptions: soak the rich, and stop globalization. Whether globalization even could be stopped now is far from clear. But if liberal international trade had never happened — say, tariff walls had been erected in the 1970s, a time Warren curiously depicts as the best-ever for the middle class — it’s likely typical people would be worse off today. Economic growth would have been lower, inflation surely higher: and inflation harms typical people more than stagnant wages.

Since roughly 1975, when middle-class income gains began to stagnate, lifespans have improved, material living standards have risen (safer cars, nearly universal air conditioning), education levels have gone up dramatically, women’s freedom and gay and minority rights have expanded — a lot of good things have happened for average people during a period that, to hear some talk, was dominated by a conspiracy against average people. Some conspiracy!

It’s true many European Union nations accomplished about the same with less increase in inequality. But since 1975, the United States has accommodated more than 40 million immigrants, allowing most to escape poverty, whereas European Union nations have accommodated less than a tenth as many immigrants in the same period. Which of the two regions has, in recent decades, produced the greatest good for the greatest number?

POINTS THAT DIDN’T QUITE MAKE THE MAIN COLUMN:

Cars:
For months, claims that Toyotas could not be stopped from accelerating, putting millions of drivers and passengers in danger, were a front-page and prominent evening-news item. Lots of exaggerated stories appeared, all skipping experience with a similar scare two decades ago about Audis, which ultimately showed that pressing the gas pedal instead of the brake was the real problem.

In the end, federal regulators found no evidence of electronic defects though Toyota admitted that gas pedals did stick on floor mats. The worst-case claim was that 93 people were killed by Toyota defects — an awful number, though the toll is likely not that high, since it comes from plaintiffs’ lawyers seeking fees and awards.

My point here is that the mainstream media gave enormous attention to a claim that 93 people in cars might have been killed. Then it turned out 3,298 people in cars were not killed. And that’s no story!

Last week, federal statistics showed that 2009 traffic fatalities lowest since 1954, despite far more people driving far more miles. There were 3,298 fewer roadways deaths than 2008, tens of thousands fewer than if fatality rates of previous decades had continued. If people weren’t driving improved cars with air bags, seat belts, antilock brakes and crash-survival chassis engineering, highway deaths would be been higher. That is — overall deaths declined because people were driving late-model cars including Toyotas.

Most news organizations gave little prominence to declining road deaths, though this is a tremendous social achievement: improved cars, and crackdowns on driving and drinking, are the main causes. The peak for road risk came in 1966: you were 3.4 times more likely to die in a car crash in 1966 than in 2009. We’d be safer still on the roads if laws against cell phone use behind the wheel were enforced.

But declining death is not a story. Unsubstantiated claims that cars can suddenly develop a mind of their own — now, there’s a story.

Climate Change:
Two months ago, yours truly said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations global warming study outfit, had lost its credibility by becoming a self-promotion vehicle for Al Gore. Your columnist believes global warming is scientifically confirmed but exaggerated as a threat; that greenhouse gas regulation is justified, but not an emergency need.

Now the Inter Academy Council, an independent council that represents the major science academies, says the IPCC looks bad. The council warns, “straying into advocacy can only hurt the IPPCC’s credibility.”

When some emails by pessimistic global warming researchers were hacked, and an inquiry cleared the researchers involved, many newspapers put this on the front page. The hacked emails were always a sideshow — worst case, they concerned private grumbling by a small number of extremists. The far more important Inter Academy Council assessment of the IPCC, a balanced and credible work regarding a United Nations affiliate, has received less attention — because it fails to conform to the end-of-the-world media storyline about global warming.

Recently, Science magazine noted that the first IPCC assessment report had 400 authors, and the latest has 1,350 — small wonder this outfit is out of control. The Western nations should dispense with the politicized IPCC process and focus on the energy-conservation and fossil-fuel-reduction steps that are justified regardless of climate trends.

A few days ago a despicable murderer named Cal Coburn Brown, who tortured a 22-year-old woman to death, was executed in Washington State, via a new technique that involves injection of a single chemical.

In June, Utah executed a murderer by firing squad. Other states and the federal government employ electrocution, hanging or multiple-chemical injection to impose capital punishment. Method of execution is a hot controversy right now in many places, and the controversy may increase if any of several current terror cases lead to the death penalty.

Method of execution is controversial because all current methods cause suffering by the condemned.

So here’s a proposal for anyone who supports capital punishment. The condemned should be shot in the head.

No means of killing a human being is faster, and thus suffering is minimized. And the death penalty is not about vengeance, right? It’s about justice. Justice should be swift. The swiftest and least painful path to death is being shot in the head.

The electric chair is a horrific way to die – the flesh burns and smokes, the condemned is gagged so that screams do not distress witnesses. Hanging usually is quick, but not always – sometimes the neck doesn’t snap and the condemned slowly suffocates. Multiple-chemical injection requires the condemned to be strapped down to prevent struggling, and may cause convulsions that last several minutes. Single-chemical injection was effective, but caused Brown to moan.

Ronnie Lee Gardner, the murderer executed by Utah in June, chose a firing squad because death by multiple shots to the heart happens faster than by chemicals — there is an argument that shooting is less inhumane than other forms of execution. It took Gardner less than two minutes to die.

Firing squads shoot at the heart because this isn’t messy — the condemned shivers, bleeds and then is still. If firing squads shot at the head, the condemned would feel nothing. Shooting through the head is the sole method of execution that involves no pain.

Shooting through the head is also the sole method of execution that causes instant death. Instant death is merciful, so that’s what capital-punishment supporters should advocate. Shoot through the head. Get it over with as fast as possible. Television the shooting, too. Might be a deterrent.

The Constitution bans “cruel” punishment. Of all methods of execution, shooting through the head appears least cruel. Gory, sure – society would prefer that the condemned expire quietly. But least cruel. So let’s shoot through the head.

In 2006 the Supreme Court said prisoners could challenge their method of execution on grounds of cruelty, then in 2008 said executions by injection could proceed. Since the Court for decades has been unable to make up its mind about any aspect of the death penalty, it’s sure to rule on this again. Let’s get shooting through the head into the mix.

If persons guilty of capital crimes were shot through the head, this would be widely denounced, even by proponents of the death penalty. But how would it differ, morally, from injecting the condemned with lethal chemicals? Morally, there would be no difference. The only difference would be the yuck factor.

Proponents of capital punishment maintain that although many innocent people have been sentenced to death, the mistakes are always caught on appeal: no innocent person has been executed, at least in the contemporary period. This chilling 2009 New Yorker investigation finds otherwise. But in many cases, including the Washington State murderer, there are no facts in dispute. The right person has been caught, granted a fair trial, and condemned.

So shoot ‘em through the head.

How would shooting the condemned through the head differ morally from any other method of execution? It wouldn’t.

Which means if you think the condemned should not be shot through the head — you think capital punishment is wrong.

Killing in self-defense or in defense of others can be moral, for individuals or for nations. Once a person is a prisoner and no longer poses any threat to society, killing becomes immoral. Only God should take the life of a helpless person. Think otherwise? Advocate shooting the condemned through the head.

Pundits are restless, an election looms – so this week, President Barack Obama is proposing yet another round of special favors, aimed at improving the economy. Prominent columnist Paul Krugman wants the plans to be “bold” and to involve huge amounts of money. Here’s a contrasting view: government should stop declaring recovery plans, bold or otherwise.

Maybe the constant announcing of new plans – especially plans backed by borrowing or tax cuts – is, itself, an impediment to economic growth.

Two years ago this month saw the beginning of the financial-sector meltdown that is the primary feature of the current high-unemployment, slow-growth mess. Since then, Republican and Democratic presidents and Treasury Secretaries alike have announced bold plan after bold plan after bold plan. Often the plans change week-to-week. Many of the plans are just political talking points, with no follow-through. Many are mutually contradictory, like advocating tax cuts and tax increases simultaneously.

Here’s what the endless succession of plans has in common – they haven’t worked. If something hasn’t worked, why does this cause us to think more of the same is required? The White House, Treasury Department and Congress should stop contemplating new plans.

Endless emphasis at high political levels on the need to “do something,” if only to appease the press, communicates the message that U.S. leadership is either panicky or has no idea what’s going on or both. When leaders act perpetually panicked, voters and business managers become nervous. Voters want new leaders and business managers put off decisions until they have a better idea what may happen next. The result, for the economy, is slower growth than the mainly good world situation — no resource shortages, low international tensions, rising education levels, liberalizing trade – would seem to suggest.

Maybe plan after plan after plan is a cause of the sluggish U.S. economy.

Maybe presidents George W. Bush and Obama, and Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner, by constantly vacillating in public about their plans, are creating the impression government privately knows things are worse than they seem. This, in turn, slows economic growth –- why invest or hire if government privately knows things are worse than they seem?

My guess is things are better than they seem: but regular announcements of new special giveaways creates the opposite impression. So President Obama and both parties, stop announcing new plans! Leave the situation alone and let a sense of normalcy resume.

Dramatic government plans were a leading cause of economic contraction in September 2008. As detailed by University of Chicago economists John Cochrane and Luigi Zingales, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy that month did not deflate markets. The Wall Street plummet and credit-markets malfunction began two weeks later, when Paulson nervously announced a mega-bailout — then began months of leaking mutually contradictory plans, many composed, Cochrane and Zingales point out, during preposterous middle-of-the-night conference calls. The plans were bold! But I don’t think clearly at 2 A.M., and neither did Paulson. The fact that there was a new plan with every phase of the moon diminished confidence, which is essential to a vibrant economy.

Obama’s infrastructure spending plan is obviously an election-year handout to interest groups. The president proposes an addition $50 billion per year in federal spending for roads, bridges and subways. This kind of spending should be justified on the merits: if road repairs are needed, then spend regardless of political considerations. To propose new spending just to quiet critics or reward voting blocs creates an impression that the White House is lurching from day to day without a larger vision. In that kind of environment, why invest or hire?

To justify more handouts, the president is talking down the economy. New initiatives are needed, Obama said last week, “to break the back of this recession.” The recession ended nine months ago, when growth resumed. Growth isn’t as strong as anyone would like, and unemployment remains the number-one domestic issue. But Obama, other Washington political leaders and pundits constantly use the word “recession” to describe a situation that is not a recession. This scares voters and business managers into believing things are worse than they are. But – scare tactics are historically a way to rationalize special-interest giveaways.

New infrastructure spending will make the deficit worse. In the category of it-would-be-funny-if-it-wasn’t-true, President Barack Obama says the new spending will not increase borrowing because it will be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes. Yet he gives no specifics. Demanding more spending now while vowing discipline later is a roasted chestnut of Washington doubletalk.

In his January State of the Union address, Obama said he would make dramatic spending cuts that would begin around now. Instead, now he proposes more spending – while vowing dramatic cuts in future.

And closing corporate loopholes — yours truly is all for that. Politicians love to say they will close loopholes. When has it happened? In June, the White House backed off from a House of Representatives move to close the “carried interest” loophole exploited by some private-equity and venture-capital funds, a loophole that is strictly a cookie jar for wealthy campaign donors. The administration was too timid to close this loophole – even the Wall Street Journal calls carried interest a “loophole” — though doing so would raise about $2 billion per year. But we’ll make an unspecified $50 billion a year cut in loopholes in the future!

Immediately after saying he will crack down on corporate taxes, Obama also proposes corporate tax cuts. Is this public policy or a Saturday Night Live sketch? Tomorrow, the president is expected to propose $200 billion in tax giveaways to business. This will make the national debt worse. Will it help the economy? Corporate profitability isn’t a problem! Corporate profits and cash positions are quite good. What’s needed is rising demand, which this giveaway does not address.

Nearly three decades ago, your columnist showed in detail that corporate taxes are at most a secondary factor in business decision-making – demand, innovation and expectations for the future are far more important. Giving business yet another tax handout – the fourth or fifth in the last decade alone – could actively backfire if the debt incurred reduces economic confidence.

Don’t we need a bold plan for the housing sector? Many Americans have serious problems making their mortgages payments – but many also talked their way into homes using liar-loans or no-down-payment deals that were essentially renting with an option to buy. More important, the real estate market has always fluctuated, and this has never been a cause of panic or debt-based bailouts before.

Even with the 2008-2009 decline, according to the Case Shiller Index, the typical American home today is worth 40 percent more than a decade ago. This is a national emergency?

And don’t tell me the emergency is the “underwater” problem of people owing more than their home are worth. If you need to sell your house right now, being underwater is terrible. If you don’t need or don’t want to sell your house, being underwater is irrelevant! Unless you’re selling, appraised value is just a number. If you plan to stay in your home, your situation vis-à-vis your monthly payment is exactly what it would be regardless whether you’re underwater or on the surface.

Yet at a time when Federal Reserve policy is lending unprecedented support to today’s homeowners – at the expense of tomorrow’s – there is pressure on Obama to announce yet another round of mortgage-subsidy “bold” plans. Right now nobody’s buying because buyers want to wait and see if there will be another handout, like the $8,000 bonus that just expired. The real estate market will not return to normal until the “bold” plans stop.

Doesn’t a second stimulus sound good? Free candy always sounds good – till it’s time to visit the dentist. Any additional debt-based initiatives would be a third stimulus – Congress dispensed $200 billion in stimulus funds in 2008, then $800 billion in 2009. Backers of more debt-based spending, such as economist Laura Tyson, are saying what they want is a “second stimulus” because this sounds less nutty than asking for a “third stimulus.” If a nation could borrow its way out of economic languor, then all nations would envy Greece.

Both parties are demanding more of policies they claim don’t work. Republicans say the 2003 tax cuts for the rich must not expire, because they are needed for economic growth. But those tax cuts have been in place for seven years and economic growth has slowed. If something doesn’t work, why is more of it the solution?

Democrats say more debt-based stimulus spending is needed for economic growth. But $1 trillion in formally designated stimulus funds have already been spent and economic growth remains slow. If something doesn’t work, why is more of it the solution?

Core problem – we are making the American future less valuable. Left-wing plans to incur more debt and spend, and right-wing plans to keep taxes very low, share this in common – both borrow from the future. When you borrow from the future, you make the future less valuable.

This is a core reason constant Washington “bold” economic plans don’t inspire the economy – the plans deplete the country’s future. If you believe the future will be worth less than the present then why hire, why build, why feel optimism? Investment spending can make a future more valuable. But neither party proposes merits-based investing – both just propose panicky new handouts to their constituencies and donors. Do these possible additional plans make you feel confidence — or dismay?

The best and smartest action Washington could take about the economy would be to stop declaring new plans. There are plenty of programs in place. Letting the situation stabilize is what the economy most needs – and a surer path to job growth.

Last night President Barack Obama announced “the end of our combat mission in Iraq.” This is welcome news — if years late. Yet in an address to the nation that ranged as far afield as energy policy and “the limitless possibilities of our time,” the president never got around to the essential question of this costly bloodbath:

Why did the United States spend seven years fighting in Iraq?

By the estimate of the British correspondent John Burns and New York Times London bureau chief, who was living in Baghdad when the invasion began and remained there until 2008, the war killed 4,500 Americans and wounded 35,000 of them. It also caused “tens of thousands” of Iraqi civilian deaths; cost $750 billion, nearly enough to wipe out this year’s federal deficit; and created “the anti-Americanism that would become commonplace around the world.”

That last is all too easy to overlook. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the world’s sympathy was with the United States. Everyone, including almost every Muslim, knew the 9-11 attack was heinous. Almost all nations, including nearly all Islamic nations, supported America’s counterattack in Afghanistan, which was clearly justified as self-defense.
Then we bombed and invaded Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the 9-11 monsters, killing at least 10 times as many innocent civilians as were killed here on September 11. We took huge numbers of Iraqis prisoner, and tortured or humiliated them.

We blasted to the ground cities such as Fallujah, destroying the homes of innocents while using antipersonnel weapons, such as white phosphorous shells, which are designed to cause intense suffering before death.

We installed a puppet government and began to kill those who opposed it. Much of the world was disgusted, with reason. We practically begged the moderate Muslims of the world to turn against us.

Why?

Last night President Obama praised U.S. military forces in Iraq, who deserve praise. In a confused, stressful situation where it was hard to tell who the enemy was, 99 percent of U.S. soldiers, marines, sailors and aircrew carried themselves with honor. But why were our forces in a confused, stressful situation?

Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a horrible place, and Saddam was a horrible person. But there are other horrible places, and the United States ignores them. Why did we invade and occupy a country that posed no national security threat to the United States? Two presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have elaborately dodged this question. America deserves an answer.

The story constantly changes. At various points it was claimed by the second Bush White House and Defense Department that Iraq was building atomic weapons, or a stronghold of al Qaeda, or even planning an attack on the United States. A video timeline of Bush Administration statements about the need to attack Iraq is under the “latest program.” Regardless of whether Rachel Maddow is your cup of tea, it’s an informative timeline. All these claims were later retracted by the White House and Defense Department.

Suppose the true motives for the attack were to destroy banned weapons and depose Saddam. Morally, those motives can be defended. But, once American forces occupied Iraq, it took about a year to capture Saddam and hunt down his senior associates and to determine that there was no atomic bomb program. After doing this, why didn’t we just leave? If the United States had left after the first year – after performing the tasks that could be defended morally – the world might have admired us. Instead we stayed and stayed and stayed, killing and dying. Why?

The only attempt at explanation is circular. Last night Obama said, “A war to disarm a state became a fight against an insurgency.” The reason the insurgency came into being was to oppose the U.S. occupation: even Bush, by 2006, said the United States had become “an occupying force.” Many Iraqi insurgents are despicable people – terrorists and criminals. Some are patriots. If another nation invaded the United States, wouldn’t Americans be radicalized and use guerilla warfare against the occupiers? To invade a country, create an insurgency and then claim the insurgency you created rationalizes years of combat and killing is Orwellian.

But there would have been chaos and violence in Iraq if we’d just pulled out and left. How, exactly, would you characterize what happened in Iraq with the United States still there? The last six years of occupation have only served to delay the moment when Iraq confronts its fate – which has always been inevitable regardless of whether U.S. forces departed or remained.

Was the invasion “the madness of King George?” Conspiracy theories, especially in the Islamic world, hold the United States attacked Iraq out of a vicious desire to slay Muslims or a venal desire to seize oil or as a ploy to control the Middle East. The first two proposed explanations are nonsense (in Kosovo the United States fought to save Muslims, and Washington could have purchased all the oil in Iraq for far more cheaply than by seizing it). The third is implausible — if the U.S. goal was control of the Middle East, it sure didn’t work.

In his 2008 book The Bush Tragedy, Jacob Weisberg proposes an explanation that seems chillingly believable.  George W. Bush, Weisberg shows, grew up obsessed with proving that he was tougher than his father George H. W. Bush; the obsession was complicated by the father being a hero at the Battle of Midway in World War II, while the son went to great lengths to avoid military duty in Vietnam. During the 1991 Gulf War, the father’s army expelled Saddam from Kuwait but did not enter Iraq to depose the dictator — the elder Bush saying then, and maintaining since, this was because the international community had not sanctioned an attack on Iraq itself.

When the younger Bush became president and 9-11 created a pretext for use of the military, Weisberg’s theory continues, he seized the chance to invade Iraq, do what his father did not and become tougher than his father, at least within his own mind, since masculinity is not required to sit at a desk and tell others to die.

Bush Administration figures such as Vice President Dick Cheney, CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Department advisor Douglas Feith deliberately lied about the situation in Iraq in order to justify war, and Democrats in the House and Senate, in order to avoid criticism, rolled over.

We don’t have a peace treaty with Iraq. After all the cost in blood and sorrow, the United States and Iraq don’t have a peace agreement. For that matter, Iraq never formally surrendered. Think these are formalities? Peace treaties are the gold standard of success on the battlefield. Wars that “end” without them don’t really end.

There was no peace treaty to conclude the Korean War — just a 1953 armistice that stopped the shooting. That the Korean War did not end in a peace agreement is a reason military tensions between North and South Korea continue today. Fifty-seven years later, the terms of the armistice are still observed, but little else has been agreed on. For all the sacrifice in Iraq, where’s the treaty that spells out peace and friendship?

All we have is a “Status of Forces Agreement.” In 2008, the Bush Administration completed a SOFA in which Iraq’s sort-of government formally accepted the United States occupation, in return for the United States promising to depart if so instructed. By the terms of the SOFA, Baghdad could order Americans out of the country on short notice – and the United States would have no choice but depart. A referendum to see if the Iraqi people approve of the SOFA, and thereby grant legitimacy to the invasion, has been postponed repeatedly.

The July 2009 deadline to remove U.S. combat forces from Iraqi cities wasn’t an Obama idea, it was specified by the SOFA. So too was the current exit of heavy combat forces such as armored units. Though Barack Obama has been wise to withdraw heavy combat forces, he’s only following the script the Bush Administration laid out before leaving office. It borders on the bizarre to think that after campaigning for the presidency partly on his opposition to the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq, Obama is still following Bush’s Iraq timetable after being president for nearly two years, and not acting on any new vision of his own.

Is the “mission accomplished?” Bush famously claimed this while looking ridiculous on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln in 2003, and Obama sort-of claimed it from the White House last night. The claim is impossible to assess – since we still don’t know what the mission was.

Would the dead have wanted us to continue fighting? A haunting question of combat is whether others must fall to honor the sacrifices of those who have fallen before. It was argued during the Vietnam War that simply leaving would mean those who already had died there had died for naught. Last night, Obama essentially used this argument, quoting an Army sergeant as saying, “I know that to my brothers in arms who fought and died, this day would probably mean a lot.”

We live in a society that conducts these kinds of debates in sound bites. Once, the debate was conducted in poetry. In 1915, the Canadian physician John McCrea – who perished in World War I – wrote the poem In Flanders Fields, which argues that dead soldiers would want others to die, until there is victory. This poem became a sensation in the United Kingdom and the United States. Its relevant stanza:

To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep.

In 1918 Wilfred Owen, a British poet who served in World War I and died in France days before the ceasefire, argued the opposite in the poem Dulce et Decorum Est. This poem became a second public sensation. Its relevant stanza:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The Latin means, “it is sweet and right to die for your country.” It is etched on the chapel wall at Sandhurst, the British school for army officers.

The fallen cannot speak: it is reasonable to suppose they would think others should keep fighting if there were something to fight for, but oppose others dying so that politicians can avoid being honest or making hard decisions. We kept fighting in Iraq. And we still don’t know why.