Hear the talk:
Everybody is talking about how much the war in Iraq is costing us. Some say it is costing 100,000 dollars per minute. My son remembered the figure of 2 million dollars per hour, or 48 million dollars each day of the year. One internet site quotes 4.5 billion dollars per month. Another internet site spoke of a total cost, before it is all over, of two trillion dollars.
All such figures numb the mind. What does a figure like two trillion mean, or 4.5 billion, or 100,000 per minute. What I like to know is how much does it cost me, or how much does it cost every man, woman & child in America -- and notice I include children. So how much, this year alone, will it cost a family of four, two parents, two children.
The defense department says it will cost us, this year alone, 120 billion dollars. If we divide 120 billion dollars by 300 million people, that is 400 dollars per person. A family of four would therefore pay $1,600 dollars. That is unbelievable, unbelievable. A tiny baby, a baby one month old, is contributing $400 dollars to a war in Iraq -- this year alone -- just this year. This year alone, a family of four is paying $1,600 to support an absolutely insane war in a land far away.
Let us take what some people say will be the ultimate cost of the war: two trillion dollars. This mad fiasco will cost every man, woman & child roughly seven thousand dollars. A family of four? Forty nine thousand dollars.
Are we insane? Fifty thousand dollars. Are we nuts? We must be nuts. The loss of one human life is incalculable, but the loss of 50,000 dollars is calculable. It is madness. Two million dollars an hour. Forty eight million dollars a day. 4.5 billion a month.
I can’t cope with such numbers. I can imagine 50,000 dollars. In a whole lifetime of work, I, a productive man in a decent paying job, barely managed to save twice that amount of money. I worked hard for almost 35 years. For most of those years I barely managed to earn enough money to feed & house my family -- and towards the end I finally managed a nest egg of 100,000 dollars -- something to supplement my pension.
And now my government is spending 7,000 dollars of my tax money to fund just one small war in a country far away that never really threatened me.
Somebody somewhere is nuts, and they are using my hard earned money to play games, to fund wild wars in far away places. Please, please, stop. If we stop right now, it seems this fiasco will cost each of us 7,000 dollars, a family of four 50,000 dollars. And we are not stopping. President Bush is sending more troops, risking more American lives, spending more of your money & my money. Why are we allowing this to happen? So
Copyright © 2007 Henry Morgenstein