Cost of war in Iraq

[mckitterick]

Link snarfed from c3fyn's LJ. This is simply astounding. And for what? To help a few corporate cronies get rich? To ensure an oil supply after the Saudis fall to internal revolution and we lose our number-one oil supplier ally?

It's a sin, it's evil, it's wrong. Take a look:
http://www.costofwar.com/index-public-education.html

Let's see... if it costs about $2000 per second, that's $120,000 per minute, $7,200,000 per hour, and $172,800,000 per day. That's about a dollar from each adult living in the USA per day.

So, answer me this: Is the entertainment of watching your fellow Americans, military friends and relatives, Iraqi collatorals, "coalition of the willing" soldiers, and foreign "evil-doers" die every day worth the $365/year subscription? Oh, wait, if you're married that's nearly 800 bucks a year for the show. For each and every American household.

Enjoy!

(Sorry about upping your blood pressure, but I had to share.)

Chris

Comments

[orin2.livejournal.com]

I'm going to comment on this from a military person's point of view. I joined the military because of September 11th. As corny as it may sound, I believe that most americans do not appreciate what we have. They don't appreciate the freedom we have and I was one of thsoe people. So I joined and I do not regret it for a moment. I am around soldiers all day long. We are a lot like other people. We have families, problems and hobbies. We have a variety of different opionions on the war in Iraq, a topic that comes up almost daily. Most people think about Iraq and they thinkg "Man, that's a ridiculous play for oil." or" W has gone looney and it is just his pride." or something like that. Most of us think of the war in different terms such as "I don't want to die." or "I hope my friend in Baghdad doesn't get shot." or "I don't want to be away from my family for a year." These are the problems we deal with and the crazy thing is we asked for it. Nobody made us sign up. From my point of view, I think the war in Iraq is foolish. I do not believe that you can force a way of life upon a people. If the desire doesn't come from the overwhelming majority who are willing to act on their desire, I do not belive it will be successful. I also don't think it is the place of the United States to tell other countries what they can or cannot do. A policy of premptively striking at countries who pose a risk of harming the US is absurd. Under that policy we may as well attack the rest of the world and colonize them now. How can a nation that preaches freedom and democracy attack a soveriegn country, depose its leader (Who granted was someone who deserved to go) and then reorganize the government on their own model? What does it say that the majority of world countries, who are democracies themselves, will not support you? Nothing good I assure you.
All that being said, it is still my job to go where my commanders tell me and try to do the best job I can. And to die if that is necessary. Because I know that somehow I can have a positive impact, even if it means merely helping some Iraqi kid have a better life. No I don't agree with the war, its cost or the inevitable people who are profiting for it. The only thing I can do is what I plan to do and that's vote for someone besides Bush in the election.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Thanks. You know, people like you and a card-playing buddy from Seattle and lots of other people I know joined up to do their part to defeat terrorism after 9/11. Whenever I hear of someone who did that -- especially friends -- it really makes me both nervous and proud. Proud that you wanted to help prevent attacks, nervous because we know wars are never tidy and bloodless, even for a country with near-limitless power.

But when Bush did the Iraq thing, I think most people (well, educated people, anyway) realized it had nothing to do with 9/11. Now we look at our friends who might be over there (like my buddy) or are headed that way (perhaps you and others), and we think, "That fucking piece of shite Dubya is sending my friend into harm's way for no damned good reason. And look how much it's costing in money, too. And he's not doing it for any viable reason, so it must be for oil and to make his cronies richer. Fuck!" (And some right-wingers wonder why people are mad at Dubya and his ruling council.)

Nevertheless, I think people like me and even the most bleeding-heart liberals are still so proud of our troops, that you're willing to execute the military's plan. Someone has to, and if the political hawks make horrible decisions, well, that's not our troops' fault. The best thing we can do for our soldiers is to end the occupation as soon as possible. I mean, what, we're going to just abandon Iraq to civil war? Well, no. Dubya started this mess, and our troops will do their best to clean it up.

But none of it was necessary, at least not the way we did it. If all the UN were involved, and the world was with us in freeing Iraq from its dictator, and we weren't stirring a new Crusade/Jihad by ourselves, things would look much different. But it's too late for that now. We're in there basically alone, creating America-hate among the Muslim world, throwing away all the diplomatic currency 9/11 had earned us, burning millions of dollars a day for what appears to be no reason but profit. What a fucking mess. At least Afghanistan was the right thing to do, and it should have cleared our hawkish need to attack someone in response to 9/11.

So thank you and your military kin for being there in Afghanistan... and also when our lousy rulers declared pre-emptive war on Iraq -- if no one had gone to fight, I can't even imagine what might have happened. Picture how ugly it would have been if only 10% of the soldiers showed up? Imagine what the Muslim world would have done to a defeated American army on the Iraqi desert.

Now imagine that we'd only gone to Afghanistan and then united the whole world against terrorism. I suspect that's what you were expecting to be involved in when you signed up. I'm so sorry that we haven't removed the current US dictatorship and made your life safer and your mission better-directed. But I am also so proud that you continue to serve our country, knowing that you could end up in bad places.

Chris

[worldforger.livejournal.com]

Amen.

As a former soldier myself, what I cannot understand is those people who equate "supporting our troops," with supporting Bush and sending our loved ones off to die for one man's ambitions.

I support our troops, and I believe the best way to support them is to bring them home and depose their current fraudulently elected, anti-human rights, anti-religious-freedom, anti-American, neo-fascist commander in chief.

[orin2.livejournal.com]

That's exactly how I feel about it too.