We all know the Iraq War is costing a lot of money, and I mean a lot, according to costofwar.com $505,669,850,000 has been spent on the Iraq war so far and rising every second by nearly $5,000. If you sit back and look at this number, or both of those numbers for that fact, your probably thinking the same thing I was when I read them–utterly ridiculous. This all averages out to about 4,681 dollars spent per household, 1,721 dollars per person, and 341.4 million per day. That’s a lot of money and it’s a lot of money that could be put to better use.
For instance, that billions upon billions of dollars estimate could buy 4,094,493 houses for families struggling to live day to day. That’s for a fairly good sized house of 1,300 square feet at a low cost estimate of $95 per square foot. Even if you used the high end of the building per square foot costs, which is 150 dollars per square foot, 2,593,178 houses could still be built. This would get families off the street that really need the help. Now I’m not talking give every homeless person, whether a drunk or a druggie, a house I’m talking about the people that truly need something like this. Like the family working at minimum wage that can’t afford things like this, that are struggling to keep up with the rent of their current apartments or homes.
Not only is this war costing a lot in money but also in lives. According to iraqbodycount.org, an estimated 82,408-89,928 innocent Iraqi civilians have died. There have been 4,309 coalition casualties and 4,001 of those lay with the U.S. alone, also according to iraqbodycount.org.
So many other things could be being done with the money and the lives lost in this war. Yet everyone continues to tune that out while they let the war ravage on. I know some people are thinking right now that this war hasn’t lost as many lives as, let’s say, WWII but it is having the same effect on our economies and the same effect on dividing our countries as the Vietnam War. Even if it is not as many lives lost those lives have still been important. We may have had a future president who lost his life to this war, a parent has lost a child, actually 4,309 parents have lost a child. If you really want to get technical between 86,707-94,237 parents have lost a child be it an Iraqi child or an American child or a British child thousands of people have lost a child.
We should start thinking about this kind of stuff. I know we need to protect our borders and we need to protect our countries from rogue states but is it really worth flying off the handle and heading into battle about. Sometimes it is necessary. It’s one of those necessary evils you can’t escape. In some cases, such as Iraq, it is not necessary especially if you are going to leap without looking. In this case it may have been a grave mistake. It’s been a five year mistake that has no end in sight and no end in the rising costs in sight either. So many things could be being done with the money and the lives lost that will never be accomplished now. Less shelters and help for the truly needy homeless will be a consequence, lives that haven’t even seen their full potential yet will never see that potential, and many, many parents will be without a child tonight and for the rest of the nights to come because they were lost in a war that is, I hate to say this but, a HUGE mistake.