war expenditures

Most Americans know that US forces have been occupying Iraq for the past seven years. However, an underreported fact about the occupation is that our tax dollars recently financed a $700 million dollar American embassy in Iraq. The compound is bigger than the Vatican, and has its own shopping mall, schools, restaurants, cinema and a water treatment facility. Operating the facility will cost United States taxpayers a billion dollars a year. In such a devastating economic climate, it is hard to imagine how the US government plans to maintain this Embassy along with 75 other Iraq military bases.

Wars aren’t cheap– they require transport, weapons, infrastructure, oil, water and food. The costs of war are borne by governments, who are funded by the taxpayers. In essence, the taxpayer is the main financier of most military operations. As America faces the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, with state and local budgets strapped for cash and thousands of people losing their jobs and homes, shouldn’t citizens’ hard earned money be spent on the betterment of society and the revitalization of our economy, instead of the perpetuation of death and destruction?

According to Economist Joseph Stiglitz, the Iraq war alone has already cost taxpayers over $3 trillion. The Center for Defense Information states that 51% of federal income taxes go specifically to military operations- not healthcare or education. Shockingly, 15% of those taxes is spent on paying off the interest to the national debt incurred by military spending. The exponential growth of the military machine should be an issue of great concern in a country already racked with debt. Since 2001, the National Debt has doubled from $5 trillion to $11 trillion, and every American owns a $33,000 slice of it. With this much debt hanging over the heads of American citizens, a prosperous future seems like a distant dream.

Our politicians continue to repeat the mantra that the ever expanding military budget and supplemental war bills are necessary in order to keep this country safe. The military industrial complex continues to increase, even though the threat of terrorism in this country is almost nonexistent. You are twelve times more likely to die of accidental suffocation in bed than you are from a terrorist attack– yet you don’t see the US engaging in a $3 trillion war against accidental suffocation.

The financial costs of these wars are astronomical, but the human costs have also been devastating. The British polling group Opinion Research Business has found that more than 40,000 Afghanis have died and almost 2,000,000 refugees have fled the country since the beginning of the Afghanistan War. 6,000 American soldiers have died and more than 31,000 have been wounded as a result of both wars. One million-plus Iraqi citizens have died as a result of our occupation and over 4 million have been displaced. According to an Oxfam study, Iraqi citizens face an enormous humanitarian crisis– 43% live on less than a dollar a day. The UN reports that 1/3 of Iraqis don't have access to clean drinking water, and Baghdad residents have only 1-2 hours of electricity per day. Although “freed” from Saddam’s rule, Iraqi citizens endure a substandard quality of life under America’s occupation.

Americans worried about the economic viability of these wars must lobby the administration to change course– away from crippling debt and endless wars.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." -Martin Luther King Jr

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