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Also Blown Away: Our MoneyWhen President Bush told us he was going to bomb Iraq, he failed to mention that making war actually costs money. No one asked him the obvious questions. How much will the war cost? What will we give up to pay for it? Who will pay? It wasn't until the first bombs dropped that Bush handed the nation its first bill: $75 billion in taxpayer money, which was supposed to cover a 30-day war. There was already $380 billion in the military budget for 2003. He didn't mention that there would be more extra bills even after Saddam scrammed. Recently, he has gotten another $87 billion to continue the military occupation, and there is no end in sight. That first $75 billion for a 30-day war was an interesting figure, because it equals roughly the amount missing from the budgets of the states for 2004. It could have saved the services and schools that are now being cut. Is this much money necessary? How much money does it take for the U.S. to feel safe? The U.S. already spends an amount equal to the total military budgets of the next 25 biggest military spending countries combined! We're buying a tank to squash on ant. And the tank isn't working; the ant isn't squashed, it just gets pushed deeper into the sand by the weight of the tank treads. What is squashed is the money that provides for the well being of all of us. President Eisenhower, a Republican and a general, understood this. Fifty years ago he stated, "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…We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people."
Meizhu Lui is executive director of United for a Fair Economy in Boston. (www.ufenet.org) |
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