5 January 2005
Repairing and preventing
With a recent report on the military cost in Iraq, Frank Boosman has put things in perspective as they say and compared it to the U.S.'s tsunami relief. You remember the tsunami? An estimated 1/2 million people dead and millions more displaced? Hundreds of thousands of families across many countries fragmented? No? Well, anyway, the amount of money the U.S. has contributed is equal to 42.27 hours of war in Iraq. Less than Germany's or Japan's contribution (who combined have only a 10th of the U.S.'s GDP).
And if that isn't enough, take this quote from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) of the Senate Armed Services Committee:
I hope they ask for something big. Look, this is a test of wills. We need to show our enemies that we are not going to do this on the cheap.
Yes, all politics and diplomacy work with some degree of appearance-over-substance. However, this blatant show of testosterone over deliberation is in total disregard for just how lost we are (or even, let's say, may be) in Iraq. We have little international support and must dump greater amounts of money into it. Our monomania is apparently not un-stoppable.
However, am I acting the same way by comparing monies given by each country to charity? Or am I just weighing the two in context? How much is being accomplished in Iraq and how much could be accomplished elsewhere if more than 42.27 hours of that money were put to use where there is no equivocation on its usefulness?
[ via BoingBoing -> pseudorandom -> Chicago Sun-Times ]
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