You have a stake in Iraq
Imagine what San Benito County could do with $130 million.
Performing arts center? You’ve got it. Regional park? Say the
word. Modern schools the envy of nearby communities. Sure.
That figure, more than $130 million by midweek this week, is the
cost of the war in Iraq thus far to San Benito County, according to
a Web site that can be found at
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home. Visitors to the
site can watch the numbers click by, just like on the odometer of a
speeding car.
You have a stake in Iraq
Imagine what San Benito County could do with $130 million.
Performing arts center? You’ve got it. Regional park? Say the word. Modern schools the envy of nearby communities. Sure.
That figure, more than $130 million by midweek this week, is the cost of the war in Iraq thus far to San Benito County, according to a Web site that can be found at http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home. Visitors to the site can watch the numbers click by, just like on the odometer of a speeding car.
For San Benito County, the war goes up by about a dollar per second. With the local share of already-approved Iraq war spending at $158.1 million, the site goes on to describe what that could buy: 473 affordable housing units or 2,824 public safety officers for a year, or 23,754 one-year university scholarships.
The monetary costs ignore the war’s greatest toll, the one it takes in lives.
But it is an opportunity for all of us to pause for a moment to consider what may have been.
Beginning this week, the Pinnacle will publish the cost of the Iraq conflict on page 1 of every edition, as reported by the National Priorities Project.
Why bother?
It certainly will not change any minds about the war. Like the vast majority of Americans, we believe it to be a misguided folly.
But it will serve as a weekly reminder that, like it or not, all of us are called to fight the war in Iraq. That’s something worth thinking about at least once a week.
