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The Truth, Mainly
Cost of Iraq minute: $100,000?
Commentary by Leon Satterfield, Lincoln Journal Star, Nov. 21, 2005
Got an odd piece of e-mail
the other day. It was written by Melanie Hunter for CNSNews.com, whatever
that may be, and its opening sentence was this:
"President Bush and the current
administration have borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than
the previous 42 presidents combined, a group of conservative to moderate
Democrats said Friday."
I yawned.
The source of that bit of
news was a group called "Blue Dog Coalition." I almost never read
pieces that claim to have been written by dogs. Not that I have anything
against dogs, but I don't quite trust humans who try to make you think they're
canines.
But I pushed on to the next paragraph which said that "according to the Treasury
Department, from 1776-2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, 42 U.S.
presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and
financial institutions, but in the past four years alone, the Bush administration
borrowed $1.05 trillion."
I yawned again.
I had a dim sense that I ought to be indignant over that news, but I couldn't
get my indignation tap turned on. That's because I find it almost impossible to
get indignant about a number ending with a whole lot of zeros. You know, something like "The
governor was indicted for confiscating ten bazillion dollars from the
aid-to-the-homeless fund."
I have no idea how many zeros there are in $1.05 trillion either. So when I read
on the internet that President Bush has borrowed $1.05 trillion when all the
previous presidents combined borrowed only $1.01 trillion, I just doze off
because I have no idea what such numbers mean.
I was an English major.
But then my older son—the math-physics-computer jock—forwards some e-mail to
me. It's from my son's friend, a guy named Robert Heckendorn, and he's come up
with a way of giving new meaning to large amounts of money we're spending on
the war.
What Heckendorn does is talk about the intersection of money and time and place.
(Don't feel inadequate; I didn't know there was such an intersection either.)
He proposes that "we look at money in terms of an 'Iraq-minute' to get a
feeling for at least the monetary cost of this war."
That quest, he says, started when he flew to Washington, D.C. He asked the lady
at the airport desk if he could take the Metro—the D.C. subway—into downtown.
She said the subway hadn't been built out to the airport because it would cost
about $1 billion (however much that is) to extend the subway that far.
And, Heckendorn says, that's where he got his idea: "It occurred to me, if
we are spending billions a year in Iraq, perhaps we could just leave Iraq a couple
of days early and pay for the entire subway extension project. In fact, what could we pay for if we
even left Iraq just a minute early?"
So he did the math. He wasn't an English major.
He says that according to
the National Priorities Project, we'd spent
more than $204.5 billion on the war by Sep. 30, 2005. Rounding the total out to $200 billion, he figures that since
March 1, 2003, we've spent $6.45 billion
per month, $215 million per day, $8.9 million per
hour, and $149 thousand per minute.
Get that? One hundred forty nine thousand a minute? More than my wife and I paid
for our house, but still an almost recognizable number to me. What boggles my
mind is that we may be spending that amount every minute.
In order to avoid overstating his case, Heckendorn concludes that "one Iraq-minute equals $100 thousand."
And he goes then to the heart of his numbers:
"Next time someone says to you, 'If only we could get $2 million to fix
that road,' you say 'Why, all we would have to do is leave Iraq 20 minutes
early to pay for that.'"
And if a new school is going unbuilt because of its $24 million cost, 'you say:
'If we left Iraq four hours early, we could pay for that.'"
He goes on: When someone complains about some new and needed public facility
that government says it can't afford, "put it in Iraq-minutes for
them."
That billion-dollar subway extension in D.C.? Come back from Iraq five days early
and we've saved enough money to pay for building it.
I'm still not sure how all that adds up to the Blue Dog assertion that Pres. Bush
has borrowed more than a trillion dollars in the last four years. But how much the president is spending
on things we don't need—and thereby not able to spend on things we do need—is
suddenly coming into sharp focus.
Retired English Professor Leon Satterfield writes to salvage clarity
from his confusion. His column appears on alternate Mondays.
©Copyright Lincoln
Journal Star used with permission
"If
it is committed in the name of God or country,
there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it." -Tom Robbins
"Did you know
that the worldwide food shortage that threatens up to 500 million children
could be alleviated at the cost of only 1 day, only ONE day, of modern
warfare." - Peter Ustinov,
actor, writer and director (1921-2004)
