|
|
| |
| Sat, Nov. 22, 2008 |  |
 |
|
||
| | Time to check on our Iraq 'clock'
Friday, Feb 4, 2005 By Jack Moseley Remember this? "It's 10 o'clock; do you know where your children are?" Well, now seems an excellent time to ask another question: George Bush has been sworn in; do you know where your money's going? In this Internet age, we use "clocks" to measure dollars and all manner of constantly changing numbers to tell us exactly where we are at any second of the day. For example, there's the Doomsday Clock that says its seven minutes before midnight, meaning we're still very close to nuclear war on this earth. On other "clocks," the numbers change faster than you can write them down. The other day, I took a peek at our National Debt Clock. At that very instant, it stood at $7,613,996,138,112.83; that's more than $7.6 trillion, and the figure is growing at $2.12 billion a day. Our Population Clock told me there were 295,284,597 folks in this country at that moment. One baby was being born every 8 seconds, and one person was dying every 13 seconds. An immigrant was entering the country every 26 seconds. Those figures combined to show that the U.S. population is growing at a rate of one person every 12 seconds. Our War on Drugs Clock, when I checked it, revealed that just since Jan. 1, Uncle Sam has spent $1,063,323,358 while state governments have invested $1,632,215,588 during the same period. Together, the taxpayers have paid out more than $2.7 billion just through January. That means, we'll spend between $32.7 billion and $40 billion in public funds to continue the fight in a war we have been losing for years and years. That brings me to the latest national "clock," which is the one that concerns me most of all. I'm speaking of the Cost of War in Iraq Clock. This is the one that only talks about dollars. The real cost of this was, however, is far, far greater, because of its continuing toll in human blood, lives and wounds that touch us all. The war clock put the price to date at more than $151 billion and counting. That's $177 million per day, or $7.4 million per hour, or $122,820 per minute. Just Arkansas' share of the cost of the war to date tops $1.2 billion. But war is far more than dollars. President Dwight Eisenhower profoundly stated that war affects everybody - not just the soldiers and their families. It takes resources away from other needs in the warring countries and in the world at large. For the money this country has spent to invade and occupy Iraq, for example, we could have put 20 million kids in Head Start for a full school year. We could have provided health insurance for 90 million children, or we could have hired 2.6 million additional school teachers. We could have built 1,356,000 new homes for low-income Americans. On a global scale, we could have funded all the hunger relief programs on the planet for the next six years. We could have provided medicine for all AIDS patients in the world for 15 years. We could have guaranteed that every child born on this earth for the next 50 years would receive basic immunizations against multiple diseases. So often when we check our watches or the clocks on the walls of our kitchens or offices, we find ourselves telling ourselves, "Gosh, it's later than I thought." That's the way the Cost of War in Iraq Clock makes me feel. Our re-elected president has declined to speculate that our troops will be out of that Arab nation by the time he leaves office in four years. How many more lives will be spent? How many mentally and physically maimed Americans will this seemingly endless conflict produce? How much more will it drain from our national treasury? And what will it do to our national debt? Oh, yes, and what else will be sacrificed to pay for it? New highways? Health care? Education and heaven only knows what else? I wish the recent election in Iraq would stop the violence. I wish the Iraqis quickly would become skilled enough to defend themselves. I wish our troops could come home sooner. I sincerely hope we will not be caught in the crossfire of a civil war over there. But something tells me all that is wishful thinking. Meanwhile, the human and dollar costs go up and up and up. The clock is ticking. Do we really know what time it is? Life, luck and -30-. ------- Jack Moseley writes for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jackmoseley33@hotmail.com. |
