Article Tools

Based on the evidence of years of fighting, it seems as though the war has continued at a large price to the human race all over the world.

We hear everyday of more soldiers losing their lives in the Iraq and think of their poor families left behind to mourn their deaths. To date as a rough estimate based on cross-check data between news reports, suggest that so far the war has claimed the lives of:

  • Over 600, 000 Iraqi men and women (the population of the entire country of Luxembourg is under 500,000)
  • More than 4,000 American servicemen and women
  • British forces; 175 lives
  • The injured stands at more than 20,000 American soldiers, and more than 1,400 British soldiers with numbers rising constantly

The Real Cost to the Living

In 2006, the US had set aside 315 billion dollars for the Iraqi and the Afghanistan wars, but the cost of the Iraqi war alone has since been estimated at about 3 trillion US dollars or 1.5 trillion British pounds.

It was said then, that if 315 was stored in 1 dollar notes, the stack would be the height and thickness of a 38 story building, and if you were to line the notes up side by side, they would be long enough to wrap the Moon around its middle almost 3 times. But that was 315 billion.

On the other hand, I couldn’t really understand what 3 trillion dollars (£ 1.5 trillion) was, but apparently it’s a million times a million and looks like this when written out, 3,000,000,000,000 (12 zeros).

I still could not comprehend such a large amount, so I tried to put it in terms that would make its literal meaning it more easily understood. To put it in perspective, if I could somehow manage to stay alive for about 3,000 years, I would have to spend a million dollars a day in order to spend 3 trillion. So way before Jesus Christ’s mother Mary was born, I would’ve been spending a million dollars a day, and would still be spending as we speak.

What could this money be spent on instead of the war

  • $3 trillion would provide clean drinking water for every last individual who needs it
  • Totally eradicate world poverty
  • Buy gas for every driver in the US for 10 years
  • Educate, house and feed every last Aids orphaned child in Africa for 10 years
  • Provide Primary education for every child on earth
  • Provide free medical care for 16 million Americans (money spent on the war each day)
  • Send 43 million students to University in England

Taxpayers in the UK and in the US are paying out more than £2,000 (nearly $4,000) a second into the war (so in the time it took you to read from the top of this page to here, you’ve spent £ 240, 000 on the war). Every day more is being spent, and when America pledged £18million (nearly $36million) into the United Nations’ refugee agency, the public did not realise that this very amount is spent in less than three hours in Iraq to sustain a steadily failing war.

The obvious cost of mental and physical rehabilitation of soldiers would mean that steadily, more money has to be allocated. Money that wouldn’t have to be spent in the first place if there was no war, but that’s a different story.

Meanwhile, Mr Bush below has got to answer to the families of the dead soldiers whose pictures so poignantly make up the mural of his face.

Faced with the agonising choice of feeding the poor and providing water for millions of children who walk half a day to obtain one bucket for their families’ needs, our governments have taken the path of war. We and our children meanwhile, live with the consequences

This is how the New York times so succinctly summarised it in this accompanying chart. Based on the hefty difference between the smallest (a necessary way to save lives) and the largest (a certain way to lose lives), it is up to you to decide where the human life places on the governments’ list of importance.

It is estimated that The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to an analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes