Editorial: Mounting War Bill

27 January 2005

 From Arab News


THOUGH Iraqis are paying the highest price by far for George Bush's invasion of their country, the United States is making its own significant contribution in both blood and coin. Yesterday's crash of a US Marine helicopter near the Jordanian border claiming 31 lives was the largest single casualty figure in Iraq. Even as detailed news of this latest loss broke, the administration in Washington was announcing the need for at least an extra $80 billion in funding, largely to pursue US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. This amount will propel war spending since 9/11 to $300 billion.

Is the world really $300 billion safer or are all those dollars simply being hurled by the fistful onto the blaze that Bush ignited in Iraq? Couldn't a good part of so vast a sum of money have been better used addressing injustice, despair and poverty, the very things on which terrorism feeds so hungrily? We shall of course never know. Yet it ought to give pause for thought that this very week, the world's richest man, Microsoft boss Bill Gates, has pledged $750 million of his own money to fund a global campaign of immunization against childhood diseases. He has pointed out that his contribution dwarves the combined total already offered by America and Europe.

The Pentagon, whose 2005 budget this year — not including the extra money — is $400 billion, says that part of the cash is earmarked for the training and provision of equipment to Iraqi and Afghani forces to whom Washington intends to hand over when it is deemed that US troops have "completed their mission."