The Costs of War in Iraq

Feel the Love. Go Solar.
(My Valentine's Day Entry, transferred from another blog)

Happy Valentine's Day. Definitely french kiss someone today. Feel the love. And remember, you shouldn't love someone you don't like. A 'motitation' is a quivering moment. 'Kerlarap' is to cavort or play. So find a toothsome partner, and love thy neighbor. Why can't we all just get along?

This Iraq war is getting ridiculous. It's the largest and most expensive military engagement since Vietnam. The Congressional Budget Office estimated it's cost at 1T dollars. The Democratic staff of the Joint Congressional Economic Committee estimated it at 1.3T.

Factoring in opportunity costs, the Nobel Prize winning economist and author Joseph E. Stiglitz, who also served as the World Bank chief economist, estimates the cost of the war as exceeding 2T, projecting that our troops will remain until 2010. Keep in mind that the war was originally projected at 50B. The chief white house economist considered the 100-200B estimate as "very, very high." There are, of course, different ways of estimating. Some people think a human life is priceless. And there's the military divorces.

Anyhow, the realtime online war-cost tally metered at nationalpriorities.org has it at 494.334B this morning, and says it will cost $4100 dollars per American household. All together, for America, that's 275M a day, around 2B a week, around 8B a month, and 120B a year. I'm getting these numbers from different sources online. God only knows.

The 2T figure factors in healthcare costs for the physical and psychological care of injured troops, for example, and opportunity costs such as a greater deficit, higher price of oil, costs for other countries, greater insecurity, and the higher cost of recruiting troops. The total interest on the money borrowed to finance the war is between 264-328B dollars. In '07, the debt for veterans health and disability payments rose by 228B dollars. I know this is a partial picture- this war is a lot of dang money, alright?

And people think it actually made things worse. Iraqi quality of life, American credibility and security, the U.S. military. Iraq wasn't even affiliated with Al Qaida and didn't have WMD's. The terrorists there aren't going to swim across the ocean and attack us, as one commentator said. Geezus.

War is hell, Sherman said. To borrow a few choice quotes from the Good Book, Thou shalt not kill, he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword, and vengeance is mine sayeth the lord. It seems like all these soldiers think they're God or something. Only God is good. God is love, and God is a man of war. Jesus said to turn the other cheek. Does that apply to nations? What did Iraq ever do to us, though? Saddam may have been a meanie, but still.

I think cheek turning does apply in a nuclear scenario (besides averting your eyes from a blinding nuclear flash). Populaces shouldn't have to pay for the acts of their governments or the acts of a few terrorist members, no matter how heinous.

Anyway, the art of war is deception, so maybe God is a woman of peace. God is omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent, too. So it's all good, I guess. Even hell. There is goodness in the evil. Can war ever be good, though? There's the Catholic doctrine of just war. Things are more grey than black or white. Still...

Do you know what we could have done with 2T dollars? 2,000,000,000,000 U.S. dollars could have provided for two thirds of U.S. energy demand with solar panels, says one website. Bush really is an idiot, it seems. How could he have known, though. He was probably following a gut instinct that he believed was sent to him by God. I think he's crazy like that. I do tend to overreact about nuclear weapons, though. There's a surf shop in Davis called Ground Zero.

America has other priorities like infrastructure, healthcare, debt ($9T) and deficit (the U.S. trade deficit is greater than 5% of GDP, with China alone at $256B). And the list goes on. We have to clean up our superfund sites, for example. And don't forget things like libraries and teachers.

Global development is a part and parcel of our own development. I think everyone should have a computer, with access to the world book project (all the world's books online). Wouldn't that be cheaper than having libraries everywhere?

An article in the economist says the author would have to pay $600/mo for 10 yrs. to "save" the $75/mo of his current utility bill of $900/yr. The installation would cost around 65 grand, although he would get local assistance of 12k and a federal grant of 2k. Still, that's pretty cost prohibitive. That seems to negate the 2/3 quote I got from some website I know not where. The Economist author recommends buying carbon offsets. I still believe the Iraq war money could have bought quite alot of solar. I don't know what a carbon offset is, but it could have bought a lot of those, too.

Other than dollars, the war cost around 3800 dead Americans, more than 60,000 injured Americans, and estimates of between 700,000 to a million or more dead Iraqis. So how many injured Iraqis are there? We're shooting indiscriminately. There are 250,000 bullets fired for every insurgent killed. Wow. If I were an Iraqi, I would leave if I could, too. Don't you love how I'm experiencing Iraq theoretically, by the numbers? I've been to hell. Sometimes I suspect I might actually enjoy being in battle.

Isn't it weird that there are laws of war? Shouldn't war itself be illegal? What if the only arms the world had were the actual arms on our bodies? Martial arts would prosper, the philosophies and spiritualities that accompany them would proliferate, and people would get fit. That's my answer.

And if disputes arise between nations, put the leaders in a boxing ring. That would make it entertaining. Diplomats should suck on pacifiers. And nukes should definitely be abolished. Don't even get me started on new-klee-er weapons. How stupid are we? If they're so unthinkable, and can result in nuclear winter, why do we still have them? Aliens, I guess.

Happy valentine's day, though, seriously, even if you're reading this on some other day. Make every day valentine's day. Please, do a good turn daily. And be one of those thousand points of light, Dubya. And that doesn't mean a muzzle flash from a rifle.