The Real Cost of War:

The Real Cost of War: Building a Culture of Violence

The tragic events at Virginia Tech underscore that we are indeed building a culture of violence in the United States. We have become increasingly desensitized to it as statistics show we lead the industrialized world in killings, suicide, rapes, and other violent crimes. (I will discuss these other issues and the VA Tech killings in another blog, for now, I want to talk about the cost of war on the people who have to pay for it and the people who have to fight it.)

The real cost of a war culture is two fold, first, in our demonization of entire groups of people and the subsequent acceptance in the deaths of other humans; second in the impact financially, emotionally and spiritually to our society.

Here are some costs of being a war culture:

• US Defense spending now exceeds $400 billion, not counting supplemental appropriations to fund the war in Iraq. This amount is almost equal to the combined total of all the other nations in the world, although the USA is only 5% of the global population. Global military expenditure now is about US $950 Billion.

• The US defense budget exceeds the total spent by the next 23 largest military spending nations in the world.

• The USA military expenditure is more that eight times that of China, and 29 times that of the combines spending of the seven “rogue” nations of Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Sudan.( All the above statistics come from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute)

• Regarding the Iraq war:

• As of 3/25/05, the cost of the war in Iraq to US taxpayers has exceeded $158.4 billion.

• Related to US military recruitment:

• IndyMedia (March 2005) reported that African-American volunteers for the US Army declines 41% between 2001-2005(that is, from 22.7% of the recruitment pool to 13.9%)

• Related to the human cost of war to U.S. service people:

• The New England Journal of Medicine (2005) reported that. of the US Marines and Army troops stationed in Iraq:

• 95% had been shot at

• 57% reported killing an enemy combatant

• 95% reported seeing dead bodies or human remains

• 17% of returning Army veterans suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, and 50% of these men and women are not expected to recover

(Source: http://globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp)

 

By April 3, 2005 with the money we spent on the war in Iraq, we could have funded:

• 6 years of global anti-hunger programs

• 1,446,714 additional units of public housing in the USA

• basic immunization for every child in the world for 53 years

• paid for 21,281,000 kids in Head Start

• funded worldwide AIDS programs for 16 years

One final thought on the cost of war in regards to the effect is has on our fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters:

• According to a 1990 study by Bryant and Wilhite, the average veteran will earn 85 cents less per hour (about $1700 less per year) than non-veteran peers.

 

• Army Times reports that over 50,000 unemployed veterans are on the waiting list for the military’s “retraining” program. The VA estimates that 1/3 of homeless people are vets.

 

• Only 12% of male veterans and 6% of female veterans surveyed made any use of skills learned in the military in their civilian jobs.

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

— James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

I call on all men and women of conscious to become very vocal in your community. If you are of age to serve in the military, become a conscientious objector and sign the I Will Not Kill Declaration

Learn more on how to become an activist by visiting the Not In Our Name web site.