$200 billion is a lot of money. A LOT. And there are many ways to spend it. In light of President Bush's request for even more money for Iraq next year, here are few hopefully provocative comparisons:
Instead of spending nearly $200 billion in the next year alone to try to keep Iraqis from killing each other, how about we just give every man, woman, and child in Iraq roughly $8,000 in cold hard cash in return for a promise of good behavior? We give Israelis the equivalent of less than $450 per person, and Israel has been a loyal American ally for years. As a practical matter this approach is likely to be as successful as trying to force Iraqis to settle their disputes at the point of an American gun.
It also means we are spending roughly, $1.5 million for every Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Marine in Iraq. The U.N. reimburses countries that provide peacekeepers to international missions at a rate of roughly $13,200 per year. For $200 billion we could hire the U.N. to provide 14.5 million peacekeepers. Maybe we should get serious about outsourcing the war. The UN is definitely a better deal than Blackwater.
In 2003, it was estimated that between contributions from Saddam, prominent Saudis, and the Palestinian Authority, families of suicide bombers in Israel received roughly $33,000 in payments. Saddam contributed the majority of that amount, and these contributions were a major element in demonstrating his support for terrorism. There are currently roughly 500 suicide attacks annually in Iraq. It we paid each of those bombers $10 million not to kill themselves, we’d still have $195 billion left to fight the rest of the insurgency, while eliminating some of the most deadly and destabilizing incidents.
President Bush often argues that we have to fight the terrorists in Iraq so we do not have to fight them in the United States. In 2007, we spent a bit less than $8 billion on customs and border security. We could increase our efforts on this front more than twenty-fold, which would probably do more to secure Americans than fighting to maintain a stalemate in Iraq.
Bernard
www.americansecurityproject.org
www.bernardfinel.com