“For a fraction of the cost of this war,” said Mr. Stiglitz, “we could have put Social Security on a sound footing for the next half-century or more.”
Mr. Hormats mentioned Social Security and Medicare, saying that both could have been put “on a more sustainable basis.” And he cited the committee’s own calculations from last fall that showed that the money spent on the war each day is enough to enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants, or pay the annual salaries of nearly 11,000 additional border patrol agents or 14,000 more police officers.
What we’re getting instead is the stuff of nightmares. Mr. Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia, has been working with a colleague at Harvard, Linda Bilmes, to document, among other things, some of the less obvious costs of the war. These include the obligation to provide health care and disability benefits for returning veterans. Those costs will be with us for decades.
Mr. Stiglitz noted that nearly 40 percent of the 700,000 troops from the first gulf war, which lasted just a month, have become eligible for disability benefits. The current war is approaching five years in duration.
“Imagine then,” said Mr. Stiglitz, “what a war — that will almost surely involve more than 2 million troops and will almost surely last more than six or seven years — will cost. Already we are seeing large numbers of returning veterans showing up at V.A. hospitals for treatment, large numbers applying for disability and large numbers with severe psychological problems.”
Ignore it if you want but this is very real for all Americans.
We’re all liable for $11,500.00 so far for the Iraq war. Every single US citizen will pay $11,500.00 for what has happened so far. This doesn’t include the millions of veterans coming back and need medical care.
We still have veterans of previous wars that are homeless on the streets of our cities and now we’ll have millions coming back that are going to expect medical care from a crumbling infrastructure and bankrupt country.
In contrast, do some homework and look up the profits made by your favorite oil or energy company. Or look up the defense contractor that won the job of Iraq without even bidding: Halliburton. Now compare your bank account to those who make the decisions and tell me if you’re worse off than you were eight years ago.
Be very careful who you vote for. Don’t trust someone because the media tells you to. Do the research and see through the bunk on TV and radio. Get active. Do something. This won’t be much of a choice if everyone keeps ignoring the problem.
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