{"id":351,"date":"2006-08-03T08:35:57","date_gmt":"2006-08-03T08:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/?p=351"},"modified":"2014-06-14T12:49:27","modified_gmt":"2014-06-14T04:49:27","slug":"waging-a-war-we-can-all-be-proud-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/general\/waging-a-war-we-can-all-be-proud-of-351","title":{"rendered":"Waging a war we can all be proud of"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A piece by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times (which I read in the Taiwan News, 11 Jan 2006) struck a chord with me and I have thought about it a lot since. Entitled \"Waging a war we can all be proud of\", it suggested that Bush and the US would be much better off if they launched a war against poverty, rather than the current nonsense that is supposed to reduce terrorism, but is actually increasing it.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Mr. Bush would do wonders for his legacy - and, above all, wonders for the poor - if he'd summon the moral vision to launch a high-profile Global War on Poverty. That is one American-backed war that nearly all the world would thunderously applaud.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Hear, hear. <\/p>\n<p>And when you consider the costs involved in the Iraq war, it seems to me that spending only a fraction of that money on development in poor countries would be a very good insurance policy. Look how Indonesia had a much better view of the US after the tsunami, when the US was quick to provide assistance.<\/p>\n<p>Here is one site's estimate of the $ cost so far:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalpriorities.org\/cost-of\/\">Cost of National Security<\/a><\/p>\n<p>And here are some more detailed costs from <i>Institute of Policy Studies<\/i> (link no longer available). <\/p>\n<p>I can't verify the accuracy of these figures - suffice to say the US is spending <b>a lot<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p><b>Footnote 1: <\/b> I read tonight that the US military is spending $20 million on recovering the bodies of airmen who were shot down over Laos during the Vietnam era, 30 years ago. <\/p>\n<p><b>Footnote 2: <\/b> The coalition forces wasted $17 billion of Iraqi money, which they were supposed to distribute for the rebuilding of Iraq. Much of the money disappeared and cannot be accounted for. Scandalous.<\/p>\n<p class=\"alt\"><a href=\"#respond\" id=\"comms\">Be the first to comment<\/a> below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times say Bush and the US would be much better off if they launched a war against poverty, rather than the current nonsense that is supposed to reduce terrorism, but is actually increasing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}