Crossposted at Everybody Comes From Somewhere
I’m sure I’m not the only one who wonders why there is not that much discussion about the amount of money we are spending in Iraq. I know the human cost is overwhelming. But I’m also outraged at the waste of money. Today the Boston Globe looks at that question with a slide show titled What Does $455 Billion Buy? Go take a look at the slide show, but here are a couple of samples:
- 2,949 state-of-the-art high schools
- A free year at Harvard for 14.5 million people
- Feed and educate the world’s poor for 5 1/2 years
It alternately saddens and enrages me that we are spending overwhelming amounts of money to destroy and spread hate (not to mention to enrich the corporatists). But to think for just a moment what could be accomplished with those resources…well, I’m just at a loss for words.
As if that wasn’t enough, yesterday the Washington Post reported that The Katrina Aid Program is short $3.9 billion. Here’s the money quote (so to speak):
More than 20 months after the Katrina catastrophe, tens of thousands of houses remain vacant, in part because of administrative delays in the aid program, the largest single source of direct federal help for homeowners. To date, only 16,000 of 130,000 applicants have received money.
Meanwhile, back in Iraq, I’m continuing to watch the weekly vidoes produced at Hometown Baghdad. The latest episode shows Saif, one of the young men the series has been following, packing up his house to move to Jordan. The way this series is progressing, I think it will finally end with all of the videographers leaving the country. At the end of this particular video, a woman comes to his house begging and Saif, after giving her some money, says this happens 5-6 times a day. Here’s one of the comments to this particular video:
The social structure and fabric of Iraq has been destroyed. Iraq is full of beggars and homeless, including children. We are seeing the destruction of a country, its culture and its people and we are powerless to do anything.
I don’t know how to end this diary. I’d like to offer some words of hope, but I have none. I only know that today I want to bear witness to this travesty.
To say we messed up there would be a great understatement. WE simply devastated that country.
the obscene amounts of money that have been expended, allocated, and stolen during this exercise are unfathomable to the average person. the dialog, frame if you will, has to change. read this:
lTMF’sA
But for all the talk of funding Bush’s War, the actual numbers are rarely brought up.
Yes, that’s what has been bothering me too. And I also agree that the numbers are just so staggering, we can’t comprehend it. Thanks for bringing this here. It helps put more perspective on it.
I’d buy solar panels and install them on every major building and home I could.
Oh, where do I begin…?
Subsidize solar panels and a range of other energy-producing and saving measures so that they are affordable (and fashionable!) for the average American homeowner — and provide tax incentives for the commercial real estate industry to do the same. And look at re-vitalizing our transportation networks for a new century, emphasizing high-speed rail rather than short airplane hops… Get Lockheed and all those other “defense” contractors looking at things that are constructive instead of destructive. I’m sure they can be incredibly competitive in whole new fields if there’s federal money in it for them.
Expand Medicare to cover every person in the US, and work out a package deal to lower the cost of prescription drugs by negotiation with big pharmaceuticals. Including a PR campaign that shows just how little “research and development” they actually do, compared to the federal government grants.(and while we’re at it, revitalizing the oversight of FDA so that its approval means something has been thoroughly tested by truly independent labs, so people can have faith in the “FDA APPROVED” stamp again…)
Abolish NCLB, and provide real funding to schools, especially those in rural and urban districts that are in greater need of additional support. Let’s help under-performing schools rather than penalizing them for a change.
Get our troops home, and fully fund the VA. And look at what it’s going to cost to restore our military, emphasizing training and support of personnel over the high-cost technology that is superfluous and ill-suited for the 21st century kind of warfare anyway. Conventional military forces are good for what they’re good for, but we need wider flexibility for unconventional engagement, when necessary. I figure the military budget can be cut in half and STILL do all this — and if the military offers a real step up for young people again, we shouldn’t have any problem recruiting or retaining good people for it.
Am I out of money yet? 🙂
(okay, I realize that $445 billion will probably only be enough for ONE of these things, if that, not all of them. It really is a huge number to even contemplate…. but it would sure go a long way if used to help real people instead of destroy them, both here and in Iraq.)
Five star medical care for every single person residing in the United States.
Every.
Single.
One.
The rest goes for education, higher basic pay for the lower ranks of soldiers, and adding Franklin Roosevelt’s likeness to Mount Rushmore.
All of these things would be an INVESTMENT that would yield returns for our nation far beyond the original expenditure–an investment, NOT an expenditure.
…nations, aka the poorest of the poor. I think those countries would be better served by changing World Bank/IMF policies that are designed to keep them in debt servitude, rather than “foreign aid” that tends to go straight into the Swiss bank accounts of whatever dictator happens to be running the country into the ground that week.
Here’s the latest episode from Hometown Baghdad where Ausama takes a trip to the market. Maybe Senator McCain can give him some advice about how safe this kind of thing is supposed to be now that the surge is “working.” <snark>