The Cost of the war in Iraq!

Binomate

http://www.costofwar.com/

$796 per person!

Binomate

There are some shocking figures and estimations there.

Instead, we could have ensured that every child in the world was given basic immunizations for
66
years.

Rb

Doesn't really surprise me tbh.


Afterall,inflation pushes the price of everything up

Moriarty

'So?' The money was never going to be spent immunizing every child in the world for the next 60 odd years. It may not even have gone into anything you'd even vaguely agree with. $200 billion is a fairly small drop in a ~$40 trillion annual budget, in the grand scheme of things.

Eoin

Moriarty wrote:

'So?' The money was never going to be spent immunizing every child in the world for the next 60 odd years. It may not even have gone into anything you'd even vaguely agree with. $200 billion is a fairly small drop in a ~$40 trillion annual budget, in the grand scheme of things.

Good point - anyway, I would imagine that a huge amount of that money was spent with American companies anyway, so it probably never left the economy.

Memnoch

Moriarty wrote:

'So?' The money was never going to be spent immunizing every child in the world for the next 60 odd years. It may not even have gone into anything you'd even vaguely agree with. $200 billion is a fairly small drop in a ~$40 trillion annual budget, in the grand scheme of things.

The point isn't what the money was GOING to be spent on. Rather the point was to outline how many more constructive and wonderful uses such a vast amount of money could have been put to when compared with spending it on murdering innocent people, in the grand scheme of things.

Moriarty

You could say the same about any spending any government makes on anything though.. It's just wishy-washy 'gee wouldn't it be great' thinking. Gee, wouldn't it be great to fund an interplanetary space program instead of having a health system.. etc etc etc.

Of all the reasons I've heard not to support the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, the financial reasons always struck me as some of the weakest. The US is awash with money. They can perfectly well afford to continue fighting these wars. It's not going to bankrupt the country, or even put it under serious hardship.

Memnoch

Moriarty wrote:

You could say the same about any spending any government makes on anything though..

"any government spending" does not in general involve killing thousands of people. So no it's not wishy-washy thinking as much as you would hope it to be. It's showing how money that is being wasted for purely destructive ends could be put to better use and the contrast is MUCH starker when comparing two equally meritable but different "good causes".

Of all the reasons I've heard not to support the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, the financial reasons always struck me as some of the weakest. The US is awash with money. They can perfectly well afford to continue fighting these wars. It's not going to bankrupt the country, or even put it under serious hardship.

The US isn't as awash with money as you seem to think. THere are pleanty of very poor people in the country, their health care system can't even look after all their sick and they have a record deficit. Not to mention unemployment. Anyone can afford to fight wars, but there is always an associated cost and this cost is borne by the US tax payer many of whom can ill afford to do so.

Your last statement sums up your callousness perfectly. You trying to tell me that there isn't a sizable population in the US that does not suffer serious hardship? Didn't 3,000 people just lose their jobs in New Orleans after the city was devestated by the hurricane. Not only have these people lost friends/family and probably all thier posessions, but now they are told the government can't afford to keep them in a job? Examples of hardship are countless throughout the US, but "Have's" like you will never be able to see the point of view of the "have-nots" and the issue of finance will remain "wishy-washy".

I doubt those in the US who cannot afford medical care would agree with you however

Moriarty

You've missed my point. I wasn't saying that there's no more worthwhile thing to spend money on, I'm saying that no more worthwhile cause will have money spent on it instead. It would require a change in attitude in the American government that doesn't seem very likely. The money was already going to be spent on tax cuts, pentagon funding, etc etc etc because that's where the republicans current priorities lie. You're not complaining about the cost of the war per-se, just how the current administration is spending the money they have to spend.

Get me now?

Memnoch

that changes things how exactly?

We all know that the current administration is foolish as reflected by countless policy decisions of their term in office. This thread isn't about what the current administration would do, because that's kind of obvious.

Rather it is a comment on the further damnation of this ill concieved war crime that is the invasion of iraq.

Moriarty

Memnoch wrote:

Rather it is a comment on the further damnation of this ill concieved war crime that is the invasion of iraq.

Because they didn't spend their money the way you want them to?

I see.

The Corinthian

Moriarty wrote:

Because they didn't spend their money the way you want them to?

I would have to agree. Whether or not a big pile of money was spent is actually immaterial. What matters is whether this pile was well spent or wasted. And to date, in this thread, it has simply been assumed that there has been no benefits to this expenditure.

Essentially it is like claiming that, say, paying a salary to public servants is bad based simply upon the fact that is costs money as opposed to that money being wasted or that the opportuity cost of not paying that salary would be much higher.

stevenmu

American military spending props up huge segments of their economy, through military contractors, their suppliers (steel, technology companies etc) and on down through the chain (shops employees use etc). No one knows exactly what effect large cutbacks would have, but almost everyone agrees it would be seriously detrimental to their economy. In terms of financial planning, it's every governments duty to prioritise their own countries needs ahead of charity, otherwise they risk the collapse of their own economy and they end up need charity instead of being in a position to provide it.