War funds could have better use

Floyd Hurt Fluvanna County
Published: May 25, 2008

Choose your word: dupe, chump, sap, schnook, boob, sitting duck, dummy or fool.

Any of these applies to all of us in the United States.

Since 9/11 we have spent as much as $5 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the aftermath. That’s $5 trillion!

We were duped into believing that this cost was necessary to protect us from “the terrorists.”

But where are the terrorists? Let’s look at three very diverse “terrors.”  Remember, there are many more.

l Infrastructure: polluted water, bridges falling down, dams breaking. Terrorist or not, the result is the same: People die.

The American Society of Civil Engineers gives our infrastructure an overall grade of “D.” The group estimates it will cost $1.6 trillion over five years to get it up to par. We spend $5 trillion destroying another country’s infrastructure while ours falls apart. Duped!

l Food: Thirty-five percent of our food comes from pollinators, yet last year we lost about 32 percent of the bee population in the United States. Pennsylvania State University is looking into the problem with a whopping budget of $86,000. No doubt there is more money being spent, but with the potential loss of 35 percent of our food can there ever be enough? But we spend $5 trillion to feed (or not feed) another country. Chumps.

l Near-Earth objects: Asteroids, comets, space rocks surround the Earth. Once in a while one hits us. Some have the capacity to kill everything — you, me, dogs, crickets. It may cost as much as $1 billion to build a system for early detection and another few billion for “prevention.” We spend $5 trillion to protect a portion of us from terrorists while one NEO could wipe out the world population. Boobs!

Wasting our money on relatively unimportant ego trips and lies can’t solve these and other problems, but it will leave our nation destitute.

Get mad and let the elected officials know you’re mad. After all, it is, was, your money.

I don’t like being thought of or treated like a fool, do you?