$370 Billion and Counting
I’ve been thinking about the war lately. So far, we’ve spent $370 billion on the war (including both Afghanistan and Iraq). Enough for one bullet for every man, woman, and child in the Middle East. Enough to pave Iraq into a giant parking lot for Walmart. Enough to screw over the entire world.
You know what we could have done with $370 billion dollars? We could have fed everyone in the world, and given them the medical care they need. We currently spend only $5 billion a year on cancer research, and we could have cured cancer with that money. We could have cured AIDS, which killed 3.1 million people in 2004, and 23 million since 1981.
We could have converted every car in the United States to a fuel efficient engine that doesn’t burn gasoline, and made it easy for all diesel users to switch to biodiesel. We could have finally researched to see if cold fusion exists or not. We could have setup a mining facility on the Moon to mine Helium 3 for a clean power production method. We could have finally stepped foot on Mars, and even made a permanent settlement there.
We could have improved the lives of everyone on Earth, and we didn’t.
Yea, especially since terrorism is obviously caused by quality of life conditions. Iraq being the wealthiest of the middle eastern nations (smack dab in the middle of the fray too), it must be beyond the imagination of sooo many people to expect that once their wealth gets spent on infrastructure and typical humanitarian concerns that come hand in hand with democratic rule that the surrounding nations would be profoundly affected….