According to a New York Times report, the US Defense Department plans to raise the 2003 defense budget to US$20 billion while the conflict in Afghanistan is underway. The Pentagon has said that the budget is expected to pass amid the anti-terrorism atmosphere.
When the Pentagon requires a huge budget to speed the procurement of weapons, the US economy suffers a much deeper dent. US President George W. Bush said a federal budget deficit is a price that may have to be paid to counter terrorism and ensure national security. In other words, Americans now have to pay a heavier price for retaliation for the terrorist attacks on their soil.
In fact Operation Enduring Freedom has inflicted great losses on Americans. Setting aside the fact that they have suffered the loss of their personal freedom, sources show that expenses in the first three months of the conflict totaled US$3.8 billion. At this rate, the US$40 billion budgeted shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks by the Congress, will be largely consumed by the end of next month.
Robert Reich, a labor secretary in the Clinton administration, has been a vocal critic, saying that a majority of the anti-terrorist outlay came from the tax revenues of the working class. When the global economy is in the doldrums and major enterprises are laying off employees, is it worth spending so much money on such a conflict?
In addition to the losses sustained by Americans, the expensive war has also sped famine and death, as well as highlighting a bizarre logic. The US president Dwight Eisenhower once said the world spends not only money in manufacturing weapons but also "the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." He also bluntly pointed out that "every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
By waging war, the US has driven its domestic economy to rock bottom due to immense military expenses. Places outside the US are also pushed to the fringe of famine and destruction as a result of useless waste of resources. In fact, every penny spent in war could be used in a better way.
Estimates show that the price of a missile purchased during the Gulf War could provide student lunches in a school for five years. The US$33 billion budgeted by the US for this year could provide clean drinking water for developing countries for more than 10 years. If all countries could spare their military expenses for 18 days, approximately 4 million sick children could get medical treatment. This is definitely not a game of numbers, but a choice human beings have to make between devastation and survival.
According to the statistics from the World Bank in 1996, an average of more than 800 million people have to endure hunger every day and 4 million people die of starvation annually. Since the conflict in Afghanistan began, the UN Children's Fund has repeatedly warned that more than 100,000 Afghan children will die of poverty and starvation.
While technology has developed at a tremendous pace, humanity still cannot resolve the basic problem of survival. The Bread for the World Institute, which promotes anti-poverty programs, made a cruel complaint that the collapse of humanitarianism is the main cause leading to famine.
For wars, Americans have to face a more woeful economic predicament. For wars, humanity has to suffer more famine and poverty. If peace could be obtained in return for such exorbitant prices, why has human civilization repeatedly been struck by wars and devastation?
Chien Hsi-chieh is a legislator and the director of the Peacetime Peace Foundation.
Translated by Jackie Lin
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