We now have one trillion reasons to oppose the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. On May 30, those two wars will have cost $1 trillion for
operations alone, not even counting the interest on the debt of that
borrowed money or the health care costs for returning vets. It is an
amount so incomprehensible that it can only be understood in terms of
what it could have bought rather than missiles and destruction.
For $1 trillion we could immediately give every one of the 15.4 million
unemployed people in the United States a $50,000 job and still have
$235 billion left over. We could provide free public university
education for the next 24 years to the 2 million of our children who
typically enter college annually. And those are what we can quantify.
What could $1 trillion do for cancer research or alternative energy
discoveries or any of a myriad of problems we would like to solve but
cannot because of lack of resources.
If we are not stable economically, then we are not secure as a nation.
We are now on our way to the next trillion. This hemorrhaging of our
collective resources for war has to stop now.
Published: 05/28/10
Sarasota Herald Tribune
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