amphichon

The folks at the National Priorities Project have been maintaining a counter at costofwar.com for a while now that estimates the current economic cost of our continuing misadventure in Iraq.

It’s a depressing number, especially when you watch it grow by thousands of dollars each second and consider (as they do on their site) how that number compares to our national spending for kids’ health or college scholarships.

This is the kind of thing that’s shocking when you read about it. But then you go out for drinks, or get engrossed in a book, or go see a movie, and you forget about it. We’re awfully complacent that way here in America – we’re always looking for ways to forget about the unpleasant truths that we’d rather not think about. But it’s that very complacency of ours that allowed our government to get us into this mess, and which has led to so enormously high a cost to all of us, not only in money but in the lives of our friends and families that continue to die every day far from home. We’ve been far too complacent for far too long. Pardon my French, but we need to wake the fuck up.

In that spirit, I have added my own running counter in the sidebar of the main page here at amphichon. Though I may tweak it a bit, my plan is to keep it there until American military spending in Iraq is substantially reduced (ie, until the “war” is “over”).

I agree, it’s a ridiculously small gesture, considering the scope of the problem. But every little bit helps, and if it serves to remind me (and maybe you) to be less complacent in the future, it’s worth it.

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