As of 10:06 on Sunday, May 30th, we will have spent $1 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A trillion dollars is a baffling amount of money. If you write it out, use twelve zeros. Even after serving in Congress for over a decade, I, like most Americans, still have a hard time wrapping my head around sums like this.
This month, we mark the seventh anniversary of President Bush's declaration of "mission accomplished" in Iraq, yet five American soldiers have been killed there in May alone. Iraqis went to the polls nearly three months ago, but the political system remains so fractured that no party has been able to piece together a coalition. There are some indications that sectarian violence is again on the rise.
The only clear winner of the Iraq war is Iran. Their mortal enemy, Saddam Hussein, was taken out and fellow Shiites are in charge. Iran has been emboldened to the point of threatening the stability of the region and the world with its growing nuclear capability.
And then there's Afghanistan, which, after nearly a decade of war, represents the longest continuous U.S. military engagement ever. Even the non-partisan Congressional Research Service recently declared the situation in Afghanistan as a "deteriorating security situation and no comprehensive political outcome yet in sight." And the U.S. military just suffered its 1,000th casualty in Afghanistan on Friday.
So the real question is: What have we bought for $1 trillion? Are we safer? As our troops and treasure are still locked down in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorists are training, recruiting and organizing in Somalia, Yemen and dozens of other places around the globe. While it appears that we have made significant progress in weakening Al Qaeda's network, we have increasing concerns about homegrown terrorists.
Isn't it time to invest in a different strategy? I have been doing a lot of thinking about the nexus between the low status of women and the presence of instability, violence and terrorism. It is simply a fact that the countries in which women are least empowered are the most violent. Could it be that policy-makers and defense experts have overlooked a tool that is staring us right in the face? It's in the eyes of women -- sometimes masked by a burqa, sometimes scarred with acid, sometimes tear stained from the grief of losing a husband or child to war. It's these women who are often fiercely determined to stop the killing and provide a secure environment for their families. Does it even make sense for half of the human race to play only a minor role in countries now plagued by war and violence?
The data indisputably prove the case that when investments are made in women, communities are more stable, healthier, and less violent. The principle tools, which just happen to be far less expensive than the weapons and manpower of war, are the education of girls and economic empowerment of women.
We already have some positive experience that we can build upon. Where the U.S. military and our NATO allies have made a conscious effort to reach out to local women in a culturally sensitive way, they have seen the benefits of utilizing the unique abilities of these women. A Canadian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar met regularly with local women leaders who notified NATO of local corruption and security threats and also conveyed their priorities for improving life in their communities. The U.S. marines have found that using Female Engagement Teams to establish dialogue and collaboration with Afghan women has helped to build rapport between Americans and Afghans, as well as providing critical intelligence that might otherwise have been missed.
On Sunday we hit the $1 trillion mark, but on Memorial Day we will honor all those men and women who gave their lives to fight for this country. This includes the over 5,000 men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Even in difficult economic times, this is by far the most devastating cost of all: the lives we have lost in these two conflicts.
This weekend, I hope all Americans will take the opportunity to consider the cost of ongoing war. We simply cannot afford to continue pouring American blood and treasure into conflicts that will never be solved by a total dependence on military force. We should look to the women to provide the cost-effective, powerful force for peace.
Follow Rep. Jan Schakowsky on Twitter: www.twitter.com/janschakowsky
National Priorities Project, conveyed the size of US war spending by highlighting other things that could have been bought with the money. For example, for the price of America's two wars, the US could give $5,500 in Pell grants to all of America's 19 million college students for the next nine years. One trillion would also pay the entire healthcare bill for 294 million people, or 440 million children, the group says.
One Trillion dollars is part of the cost of war. The VA estimates One Trillion dollars for health care alone for veterans for the next forty years.
How many Trillions for the work never done, the potential not achieved because of war? 3? 10? 12?
President Eisenhower:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms in not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
I could not believe it! Our back-and-forth posts are pages back.
But right-wing talking points sink to the lowest level, don't they.
After years of poorly equiping our soldiers, after five redeployments to hell, after painful, horrible injuries in both body and mind requiring life-long care for many, after years of family disruption, after facing the fact that soldiers went to hell on the wings of a lie, yes, let's at least acknowledge the full extent of these loses for our troops, their families, our nation.
Thanks, David Durham, for writing. It's good to see you.
say it's an honorable undertaking in defense of a homeland. Just thought it should come more natural. Many are fond of quoting "God will will destroy mine enemies" (para.phrsd). At vacation bible school I made book ends,.. one scribed with "Christ Our All" and the other,...
"God Is Love".
Wonder if that means Love destroys enemies? Oh well,.. it's either true or it isn't.
But then which should we teach our children?
My somewhat shortened letter to the NYT published September 28, 1986:
“There was no written history. The pyramids had not yet been built. It would be 10,000 years before the cave paintings in France were begun, and saber-toothed tigers were still prowling the planet.
Was I alone in not knowing how long ago a trillion seconds was? I asked some of my neighbors what they would say if they were told they could have $1 trillion in one-dollar bills, so long as they agreed to initial each bill. Their answers were very similar. “No!” they said. When I asked why, they said, almost without exception, “Because it would take me the rest of my life!”
We must all of us, especially our elected officials, stop thinking of a trillion seconds as merely a long time and a trillion dollars as just a lot of money. The next time our senators and representatives consider the Federal deficit and the cost of the arms race, they should allow themselves to think in terms of seconds instead of dollars. They might then picture prehistoric man hunched in a smoke-filled cave, gnawing at the bones of a woolly mammoth."
If you ask this question, too, you’ll hear the phrase "the rest of my life" over and over again. Our own lifespan is all we know, putting us in great danger of making catastrophic mistakes. As we have seen.
Or something like that.
Please die as fast and as often as you can, so that we can kill as many people worldwide as we want to.
Sincerely yours
Wall Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyHSjv9gxlE
thanks metrogyl