Or we could have just kept all the money
in D.C. for all the Libs to spend on their favorite pet projects (themselves)
and allowed the terrorists to have free run of America and the world. (That’s
what they REALLY want, as they were doing NONE of the below prior to 9-11) The
cost of the war is not the issue: the cost of NOT going to was IS. Izzy
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2005
10:52 AM
To: TruthTalk@mail.innglory.org
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] War or
peace
Moderator(s) : I am not going to make this a habit,
but this post presets some numbers that I was unfamilar with (i,.e, total cost
of war) and goes to discussions we have had in the past.
As of 2 p.m. (CST) on August 23, 2005, the war in Iraq had cost U. S. taxpayers $189,476,500,321.
This according to estimates from Congressional appropriations to date.
Take another look at that sum.
What could the nation have done with this money had we not gone to war in Iraq?
Well, . . .
We could have built 1,706,057 additional housing units.
We could have paid for 25,096,232 children to attend a full year
of Head Start.
We could have provided health insurance for 113,459,062 of our
fellow Americans.
We could have hired 3,283,653 public school teachers for a full
year.
We could have provided full-pay, four year scholarships to public universities
for 9,185,415
students.
We could have fully funded global
anti-hunger efforts for 7 years.
We could have fully funded worldwide AIDS
programs for 18
years.
We could have provided basic immunizations for every child in the world
for 63 years.
According to the National
Priorities Project, the source for this comparative
information, here in Texas
the cost of the war totals $16.6 billion. I expect
that kind of money might have helped us move toward a solution for public
school funding.
The tab for Dallas
stands at over
$890.7 million.
Hmmm. Wonder what the city of Dallas
could have accomplished with that kind of tax savings? Hunger, education,
employment training, housing, nutrition, health care. . .as I think about it,
the list is almost endless.
It may be about time to ask some questions. I believe that is especially true
if you really care about poverty, cities and justice--not to mention peace!
I know all the arguments and the now standard rhetoric about "fighting
terrorism."
But, really now, are bombs and troops and firestorms really as effective at
battling our enemies as solid diplomacy or effective initiatives to improve
global health and develop economies and new markets?
When Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. took up the anti-war cause toward
the end of his life during the Vietnam
era, some people did not understand. But Dr. King did. He knew that the needs
and the rights of under-paid, struggling sanitation workers in a city like Memphis, Tennessee
were tied directly to the billions being spent in futile jungle warfare on the
other side of the world.
History repeats itself. The cities of the nation suffer needlessly and we do
not have the results we desire.
[To watch the spending in real time check out http://costofwar.com
and http://nationalpriorities.org.]
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