I just caught a link to costofwar.com, which is a site that “tracks” the cost of the conflict in Iraq and offers various tidbits of wisdom and information. It also has a comparison function that lets you see what could have happened if the money for the war ($140 billion at the time of this writing) had instead been used for, say, public education. Nearly three million teachers could have been hired; seven million four-year college scholarships could have been offered. Since the school Alex and Kyra attend just had its science program slashed (again), I’m particularly sensitive to the waste of government money on programs that don’t truly serve the public good.
A thought-provoking quote that sums up the mission of the site:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
— President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953