It’s nice to put things into perspective sometimes, as this NY times article did for me last week.
The war on terror has been estimated to cost the United States $1.2 million. Just kidding. It’s $1.2 billion. Nope, gotcha again. $1.2 trillion. Right. Its kind of hard to even fathom, huh?
I’m not going to turn this post (or blog) into a partisan, right-wing-hawk-bashing, and I’m not going to say “I told you so”. It’s common sense that war is unnecessary and valueless, and its reckless to assume that the executive branch of our government should be able to unjustifiably send people to fight without congressional support. But let’s leave that issue aside for now.
Let’s talk about what we could be doing with $1.2 trillion.
This is what it would cost a year to provide to the world:
| Basic education for all | $6 Billion |
| Water and sanitation for all | $9 Billion |
| Reproductive health for all women | $12 Billion |
| Basic health and nutrition | $13 Billion |
source
The NY times article also has some compelling visualizations so you can understand the scale of the problem. $1.2 Trillion dollars is not a joke.
Crazy numbers…really makes the war on terror seem that much more wasteful.
I think the US Government needs to stop going to war with things (drugs, terror, etc) in general.