Time for Triage

Medical triage is an emergency system of rationing care on a battlefield or disaster scene where the injured outstrip the healthcare personnel and facilities. It involves assigning priorities for treatment. The United States right now is in a similar situation, in its disposition of military manpower and in its national budget. Military and fiscal triage has already begun.

Two unfinished wars have left the armed forces stretched thin. And unexpected level of chaos and guerrilla resistance in Iraq have ruled out normal rotation of forces and have meant extended tours of duty for volunteer National Guard and reserve troops far beyond what they had reason to expect. The demands in Iraq have prevented sending adequate forces to Afghanistan to support the American-sponsored government, counter the resurgence of the Taliban and track down Osama bin Laden, the man who started it all and who still seems to be orchestrating terrorism against the United States and its allies.

Public money also is being triaged. Tax cuts combined with slow economic growth have brought a large budget deficit. Ever increasing costs of two wars and two post-war reconstruction efforts have added to the deficit. In a hopeless effort to make ends meet, the Bush administration has been chipping away at health, education and welfare programs, to say nothing of cutting short the necessary and promised funds to the government in Afghanistan.

On top of all these demands comes the administration request for an additional $87 billion dollars to carry on the war and reconstruction in Iraq.

Particularly painful is the inclusion of a request for $600 million – on top of the $300 million already spent – for the thus far unsuccessful search for Saddam Hussein’s elusive weapons of mass destruction. As David Kay has reported to Congress, one reason for the search is to see that the weapons do not fall into the wrong hands.

Still, the main reason for spending more millions on this search seems to be to document the Bush administration’s chief justification for the Iraq war, that Saddam either already had nuclear weapons or was close to it and posed an imminent danger to the United States. The United Nations inspectors are now known to have done a creditable job in the 1990s, and their reports would be more believable to the world than those of the U.S. team.

Triage makes sense only if the priorities are sound. For example, better that an endless search for the supposed weapons would be to spend more money in the underfunded search for what one Democratic candidate called “Osama bin forgotten.”