“We are in this to win” — General David Petraeus
And it has only taken ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!
As of September, 2009, the Taliban and affiliated warlords and insurgents dominate 80% of the countryside in Afghanistan, as indicated on the map above.
The cost of sending ONE soldier to Afghanistan for one year is $1,000,000 according to estimates used by the White House. The much-debated 40,000-troop escalation would add $40 BILLION per year to the cost of the war, which was already budgeted for $144 billion in Fiscal 2009, on top of the approximately $250 billion already spent (and note that these figures do not include the cost of the war in Iraq). According to this story at The Daily Beast, $40 billion a year would pay for about half of the cost of the health care reform bill being debated in Congress, or could be used to double the Department of Homeland Security’s annual budget.
Not considered in these calculations is the enormous cost incurred through fuel consumption. The per capita consumption of fuel in Afghanistan is 22 gallons PER DAY. And, according to that linked article, the U.S. Navy says the cost per gallon for that fuel is somewhere between $300 and $400, largely due to the expense of transporting the fuel to the battle theater. Based on those figures, the cost of fuel for 40,000 troops would be a staggering $112 billion per year.
Meanwhile, back in this country, a study conducted by researchers at Harvard concluded that 2,266 military veterans died last year due to lack of heath care, compared to 115 troops killed in-theater. Approximately 1.5 million veterans lack any sort of health care coverage, private or VA-provided.
Here’s a recent video essay from Bill Moyers, who considers the troop increase and the absurdity of this war, not just in terms of the billions of dollars being wasted, but also in the futility of the mission itself.
Today is Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
For the next year, the UN will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Declaration with a variety of events, public education efforts, and other programs. The theme of the year will be “Dignity and justice — for all of us”.
The United States has decided to celebrate by destroying videotapes of CIA torture sessions, lying about it to the media, and falsifying intelligence about Iran to justify going to war.
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact. — 1984 by George Orwell
In the latest issue of Time Magazine, former U.S. Army General and CENTCOM Commander John Abizaid is quoted as telling an audience at Carnegie Mellon University this week that American troops are likely to remain in Iraq and the Middle East for the next 50 years.
Back In January, I posted this NYT graphic which demonstrates how George Bush has managed to squander away $1.2 TRILLION dollars with his unnecessary war.
Today at Dangerous Intersection, Erich Vieth posts about some of the other things that could have been done with all that money, such as giving every single man, woman and child in the United States $3,000.00 to reinvest in the economy, or, better still, giving EVERY HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET $150.00. While $150 might be thought of as chump change in this country, the average Bangladeshi only earns $380 a year, and the average annual income in Ethiopia is only $141.00.
In the comments of that post, “grumpypilgrim” (one of the other regular authors of that site) has a collection of factoids about trying to imagine the sheer amount of one trillion dollars. A one-trillion stack of dollars, he tell us, would weigh more than BOTH of the World Trade Center towers and would be 55,000 miles tall (about 20% of the distance from the Earth to the Moon). One trillion dollars would build more than 200 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers (the U.S. Navy has 10).
Meanwhile, over at the Boston Globe, there’s this photo essay that considers what you could do with $456 billion, which is what this group says the war has cost so far. Considering that it’s only about a third of the amount John Allen Poulos is citing, the possibilities are still staggering: nearly 3000 first-class high schools, free gasoline for every car in the United States for fourteen months, 30 civil engineering projects of the scale of the Big Dig, feeding and educating the world’s poor for FIVE years.
The mind boggles.
Comments:
Dr. Ron Paul, a congressman from Texas and a candidate for president has consistently voted against the invasion of Iraq since 1998, when the possibility was first presented to the US congress.
Unlike most of the Democratic front runners and all of the Republicans, Ron Paul has never allowed himself to be fooled by the nefarious neocon fear tactics.
I’m not suggesting that any loyal Democrat vote for Ron Paul in the general election. However, there is a real opportunity to slap some sense into the Republican base on the horizon, and us Libertarians could use a hand.
Following the Republican “debates” ABC News posted an online poll invitation that omitted Ron Paul while including Fred Thompson (who wasn’t even there and hasn’t announced!)
After a few hours and a few thousand emails, ABC News corrected their blunder and Ron Paul won their informal poll, as he did similar polls from other major media. Despite that, the popular media refuses to recognize his message, potential, and the number of supporters he already has.
When you look at online venues that are more in touch with the minds of the people, you’ll find all the makings of a grass roots campaign that’s being ignored by the establishment.
Again, I’m not asking any loyal Democrat to vote for Ron Paul, but if you’d like to make a little noise and perhaps piss of the the neocons…
Please feel free to Join Us in the Republican primary!
Posted by bob [URL] on 05/07/07
Good luck with that, Bob.
Personally, I think Ron Paul is a looney.
Posted by Brian [URL] on 05/07/07
The BBC reports that the British department store Selfridge’s will officially roll out its Christmas shopping season this year on AUGUST 2. But American retail chain Toys R Us has them beat with a “Christmas In July” sale that runs this week. (although, as far as I can tell, that’s just a sale and not [...]
On Friday, I decided to stop having Facebook scrape and post my blog feed. I just don’t feel like blog posts fit the very ephemeral vibe of FB, and, frankly, it irritates the living crap out of me when people post comments about the blog posts on FB instead of posting them here. I am [...]
In my copious spare time, usually whilst sitting in the waiting area at Charlotte’s karate studio, I have been making slow but steady progress toward adding tags to all the posts on this site. As of right now, I have completed tagging all the way back to April 1, 2008. The current archive of this [...]
Just the other day I posted about a young man from Nepal who was trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest man in the world. He’s only 22 inches tall, compared to the 29-inch tall He Pingping of China, who is the current record holder. Well, WAS the current [...]
boobcheese tickle fights child actor suicides Betty White Zombie Farrah Fawcett Canadian pissing habits that milkaholic Lindsay ChatRoulette whatever half-assed thing Google did this week out-of-control Toyotas
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
I recently posted about the use of menhaden in making fish oil dietary supplements and the potential risk that poses to the entire Atlantic Ocean ecosystem. One of the alternatives to using menhaden for omega-3 supplements is algae oil, because algae is the primary diet of the menhaden and is actually the source of all [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
This week Barack Obama committed the United States to at least two more years of war, 30,000 troops in harm’s way for no other reason than saving face, and umpteen billions of dollars wasted FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER and we are inundated with: Tiger Woods proving he knows how to put it in the [...]
Archive for On The Side »
All Original Content Copyright © BrianKaneOnline
All Other Content Copyright © Its Original Authors
Built on Notes Blog Core
Powered by WordPress
