inkbluesky

Ending War for Profit

Based on the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) recently determined that the Iraq war costs $720 million per day, $500,000 per minute - enough to provide homes for nearly 6,500 families, or health care for 423,529 children in just one day.

AFSC is using ten, seven-foot banners displayed at legislative and congressional offices around the country to illustrate the costs of the war and the human needs that could be addressed with those same resources. The National Priorities Project (NPP) also has a new report on the Bush Administration’s latest $50 billion spending request, which would bring the total cost of the Iraq War to $617 billion.

In addition to these staggering costs, we’re also learning more about how this war has served as a boondoggle for defense contractors, with war profit-making gone out of control. The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill was way ahead of the curve in reporting on Blackwater’s role in the most radically privatized, outsourced war in history. (Last week, Jeremy was asked to testify before the Democratic Policy Committee about his work and reporting–which may well lead to some good reforms. )

Hurricanes are generally bad news, but if you happen to sell plywood or flashlight batteries hurricanes can have their benefits. Though one doubts that plywood or battery retailers base their business model on hoping for the worse. The same is probably true of some defense contractors. We do need their services and they would make a fair profit war or not. On the other hand where would the Blackwaters be without war. They are not an ingredient in some shadowy far left or libertarian conspiracy theory, their survival, their bottom line is inexorably tied to bloody conflict and the politicians that continue to support it.

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A neat research trick courtesy Google. Take a famous quote such as this one from Isaac Newton,

   I know not what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

And do a Google book search and your results will show the books in Google’s data base in which that quote has been used.