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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (171887)	10/4/2005 5:07:19 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

Wow, I'm an amazing cost of war calculator: <This conflict has already cost each American at least $850 in military and reconstruction costs since October 2001 > I did a very approximate boe calculation and only used 200 million Americans as taxpayers and got $1000. They go with all Americans, being about 270 million [excluding undocumented immigrants]. So using all Americans instead of just taxpayers, I'd have got $740 each. Which is pretty close to their $850. Near enough anyway. Let's not quibble about pennies when there are lives on the line. The cost of the lives and maimings is significant too. 2000 lives at $2 million each = $4 billion. A relatively small proportion of the total cost. But add in the maimings and that would shoot up, I guess to something like $20 billion [maimings are expensive - buying legs, eyes, and part of their brains, from people and giving them associated trauma would be expensive and there are a LOT more maimings than deaths]. It all adds up to about $1000 per American. Not all that much as wars go. Especially existential genocidal total wars which Islamic Jihad is running. WWII involved much more serious costs. Okay, there are the ongoing costs to include too, which I wasn't counting: <Even assuming that the 525,000 American troops who have so far served in Iraq and Afghanistan will require treatment only on the same scale as their predecessors from the Gulf war, these payments are likely to run at $7 billion a year for the next 45 years. All of this spending will need to be financed by adding to the federal debt. Extra interest payments will total $200 billion or more even if the borrowing is repaid quickly. Conflict in the Middle East has also played a part in doubling the price of oil from $30 a barrel just prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 to $60 a barrel today. Each $5 increase in the price of oil reduces our national income by about $17 billion a year. Even by this simple yardstick, if the American military presence in the region lasts another five years, the total outlay for the war could stretch to more than $1.3 trillion, or $11,300 for every household in the United States > No wonder the sign-up rate isn't very good for the USA military at present. If was considering signing up, I'd want a bond posted BEFORE I went into any hazardous situation in case of death or maiming. A bond paid in cash to a third party to be held in trust, to be paid out in a lump sum in the event of my maiming or death. I would NOT trust the US$ managers to keep the currency robust and taxpayers paying, during the decades of expected payments. Nor that competitor countries or currencies won't render the US$ and USA taxpayers valueless. I'd want cash on the barrel-head. To hire more people to fight the good fight, the pay rates are going to have to go up. People don't join the military to get shot or blown up. They are looking for a good lurk on the taxpayer's tit. Rule number one in the military = when the going gets tough, the tough get going outa there. Look at the police in New Orleans - outa there! If it's a serious war, such as Adolf driving Panzers over your face, then people will sign up in droves in communal defence and fight like hell. But fighting for Exxon and Halliburton profits and King George II's religious fantasies is another story. People want a piece of the action = cash up front. I think plenty of Iraqis and Islamic Jihadists believe that the USA is driving Panzers over their faces, so they are doing the signing up for not much pay. Hence the intense opposition. Think what $200 billion [and the rest] could have done towards revamping the UN into a reconstituted NUN which would do the job properly and without carnage, and no opportunity cost. Iraq could now be full of Globalstar and 3G cyberphones, with me rolling in money, instead of USA soldiers rolling in agony. King George II is in favour of democracy, but not where it matters = NUN. Mqurice