Following on from IAG’s ongoing monitoring of the cost of the Iraq war to the UK: Peter Wilby (formerly of the New Statesman) has been doing the one thing other economic commentators seem not to have done this week - he’s actually read the UK’s new budget. It seems military spending is growing faster than any other area of public spending, making this budget a war budget, not an education budget:

Before we all start cheering Gordon Brown’s extra £440m for education, we should look at an item in his budget that seems to have done better than anything else. The Ministry of Defence gets an extra £800m, 80% more than education and 40% of his whole £2bn extra spending package. This is to finance British operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. If, as the Guardian’s leader says this morning, education is getting its “turn in the sun”, defence is under the UV lamp all year round, night and day.

There’s an important democratic point here. The total cost of the war in Iraq, plus our part in the occupation of both that country and Afghanistan, will go past £5bn next year, the equivalent of a year’s spending on school, college and university buildings and equipment.

There’s recently been much debate when US/UK forces will leave Iraq. Britain is reducing troop levels by 10%, and Bush has been talkingabout

“the goal of having the Iraqis control more territory than the coalition by the end of 2006″

As for Britain, the Telegraph has two articles - one saying all British soldiers will be out of Iraq in one year, the other backpedalling to a figure of two years. And the parade of politicians pushing one timetable or another continues - Karl Rove restating that “the administration will not pull American troops out of Iraq until victory is won”. Senator Biden wanting them out after the summer

This debate isn’t going to stop, but there isn’t much to be gained from following every twist and turn. Better to spend time wondering how the West will maintain its control of Iraq without troops there.

Back in December, Seymour Hersh wrote a long article for the New Yorker, claiming that it would be through increased use of airpower. Hersh is already being proved right - a news report yesterday says that

“daily bombing runs and jet-missile launches have increased by more than 50% in the past five months, compared with the same period last year”

This is something that should concern us. That’s not only becase, as the Lancet mortality figures showed in 2004, helicopter gunships leave many civilian casualties. It’s also because there is an entire public debate which is missing the point - withdrawing ground troops is not the same as reducing Western influence over Iraq