How much would it cost to wage peace?

[tk2kewl]

[div style="text-align:center;border-bottom:1px solid black"]Total Cost of Wars Since 2001

[div style="text-align:center;"]
Every hour, taxpayers in the United States are paying
$8.36 million for Total Cost of Wars Since 2001.

[div style="text-align:center;border-top:1px solid black"]
? $1,669,417,909,617

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/?gclid=CjwKEAiA__C1BRDqyJOQ8_Tq230SJABWBSxnDpNIUv73uPtLA59qkKsE3vTP1VQ-KoBny5yhNPnRehoC91Dw_wcB


Embedable war cost calculators at link.

[Art_from_Ark]

1. Holy crap!

If that was in $1 bills, and they were laid on top of one another, they'd reach almost halfway to the moon

[jfern]

2. Can't we just give war a chance?

[BainsBane]

3. Let's be clear

What you are talking about is not peace but decreased--or an entire end--to military spending and US action abroad. That is not the same as peace. All of the current conflicts will continue without the US. Peace is not defined by the absence of Americans dying but by the absence of armed conflict of any kind.

I don't disagree that the US would do well to dramatically reduce its military spending, engagement, and intervention abroad, but you have to understand that would likely come with a decline in the US standard of living. You as an American reap the benefits of empire. The average incomes in this country are greater than 99 percent of the people on planet earth, and we have used our diplomatic, military, and CIA influence to secure resources from around the world.

Oil. People here are very vocal about opposition to fracking. It's an unpleasant business, but it also lessens dependence on foreign oil.
With no military involvement in oil states and no fracking, Americans need to be prepared to cut down on their consumption of energy dramatically.

I think these are all good goals, but you have to recognize there are trade offs. America sits at the core of the world system, exploiting the periphery in truly horrendous ways. That has been the case for well over a a century, and that exploitation has enabled us to live in relative comfort. Claims for equality never account for that, because the goal of most is not in fact equality but to regain what they see as their rightful place atop the capitalist world order. The military and CIA made that order possible. It made the white middle-class affluence of the 50s and 60s possible. The US stole from nations around the world. It robbed them of resources and overthrew governments that objected to that pilfering. Those are the days people here openly long for.

When I see people here say they are willing to slash their own incomes to live at the global mean, I will take these claims seriously. As long as people refuse to think through the multifaceted dimensions of issues and the historical trajectories at work, I see these sorts of statements as the equivalent of bumper stickers.

Now, I am prepared--and have been for a long time--to implement true equality, a global livable wage, which would be far less than most Americans live on now. I have noticed, however, little appetite for that among "progressives."

[tk2kewl]

5. I'm glad you seem to know so much about what "I'm talking about" given my single sentence OP

I'm wondering what the world might be like if rather than spending $1.66 Trillion on war... this is the war cost now - not the cost of maintaining our military - the cost of waging war ...we spent that money on promoting peace through helping to building much more sustainable economies here, in the ME and around world.

and i for one, would happily live in a more equal world where proper compensation for the past thefts you reference are part of a global strategy for peace and prosperity.

[Peace Patriot]

15. Thank you, tk2kewl! Great post!

There's a lot more to life than the things that money can buy. That is something many Americans have forgotten. We are just so-o-o-o-o brainwashed to equate happiness with our next purchase of some product, or with having it over others cuz we have a material object that they don't have. Many have lost or forgotten neighborliness, friendship, generous sharing and giving, the joy of really good food, the pure bliss of making something useful and making it well, the contemplation of quiet or beauty. We race around on our freeways and wonder why we are so angry, and get "road rage" and nothing satisfies us.

We need to learn happiness all over again. We are a very deprived society in that respect. Odd, that our founding document mentions "the pursuit of happiness" as a major goal of our country. Yet we are uniquely lacking in happiness and in the pursuits that bring true, deep, lasting, soul-edifying happiness.

We NEED to live more simply--work in satisfying jobs that pay enough to live on, near where we live, in smaller houses, better built for the spots of earth they inhabit (natural air cooling, for instance, and, of course, solar power), with our various needs provided locally in smaller units (for instance, dispersed government offices where we need to do something; local community medical clinics rather than mega-hospitals and huge medical office structures; small local markets and farmers markets for some things; smaller school units), with plenty of time for other interests, for family and for community, and--importantly--for citizen participation in both local and federal government.

We struggle to make a living, and don't have any time. It's insane how many of us live. And it's amazing that even more of us don't just break down and start shooting everybody. This is a credit to human resilience and adaptability. But what we are often adapting to is a horror--a corporate-dictated life of constant stress and longing for more consumer goods.

$1.66 trillion to destroy other lives--most of them innocent people--and does that make us happy? No, it makes us haunted.

I think most Americans could be convinced of the sheer joy of a less-consumptive lifestyle. Most would feel really good about it--for it would be saving the planet, and it would involve sharing and helping. It would involve true happiness or at least its pursuit. Few human beings will ever be completely happy. It's not in our natures, probably because we are aware of our own future deaths. Striving and adapting and venturing and creating, and being unhappy at times, are who we are. But we can certainly achieve much more happiness and much more satisfaction even here in the U.S.A., than we have now, and by rather simple means. I think that's what Thomas Jefferson was thinking of, when he penned "the pursuit of happiness." He was thinking of his vegetable garden.

[tk2kewl]

17. Your's says it so much better

Thank you

[upaloopa]

4. Let's talk about war and peace.

I am a Vietnam vet. Half way through my tour I refused to fight anymore. I figured out that I was lied to. So today I am still recovering from a ten year period of self destruction.

I ask myself how could we have prevented that war. When I got back home I wanted to tell people about war and how it is man at his very worst. Nobody wanted to hear me except the anti war movement.


I think we tend to take a super complicated thing and reduce it to nice sounding words. For the world to live in peace it takes more that being opposed to war. It takes all of mankind to move on to a higher level of enlightenment. That ain't going to happen in our life time.

Yea don't stop advocating for peace, it is probably the best goal we can have. One of the precepts of Buddhism is to not take the life of another being. I struggle with that. Is it better to let your self be killed or is it better to defend yourself and kill first? That is the question that I could not answer in Vietnam.

[Peace Patriot]

11. Thank you, upaloopa, for that beautiful statement!

[Luminous Animal]

13. Your story resonates through me because of my cousins' experiences with fighting in the

Viet Nam war. So so much pain and adjustment coming back home. And so much silence.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

[tk2kewl]

21. I think part of the journey toward that "higher level" is to do our very best...

to provide everyone a fair stake in the future both economically and politically. Community building engenders mutual respect which is a prerequisite for peace.

[liberal_at_heart]

6. This needs to be restated every single time Clinton and her supporters say we can't afford

single payer health care or tuition free college.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy of liberty or democracy?” ― Mahatma Gandhi

[liberal_at_heart]

8. great quote.

[MisterP]

14. "I got a new house" --Diane Feinstein

[tk2kewl]

20. "We're not running on any platform of raising taxes" -- Nancy Pelosi

[liberal_at_heart]

9. I keep hearing criticisms of Bernie's lack of foreign policy. What they really mean to say is

he won't spend enough money on war and won't bomb every country that causes us the slightest headache.

[merrily]

10. Cui bono? (Not a reference to the poster by that name.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cui_bono

eFollow the money. (Like cui bono, the most universally applicable and most terse course on politics since ever. Thank you for that, Mark Felt.)

Many people make money on war. Who makes money on peace? Find a way to make peace more financially profitable than war and we just might have world peace.

[olddots]

12. our "Defence Department "

used to be called the War Department but it sounded too warlike .

[Spitfire of ATJ]

16. During the Bush Era in the middle of the Iraq War he gave a trillion dollar tax cut to the rich.

[tecelote]

18. But, we can't afford healthcare for our citizens, education for our children...

Thanks for posting this!

Our national priorities are immoral and unjust.

A reworked meme from the 60's - Imagine if we sent teachers, doctors and engineers to Afghanistan instead of drones, tanks and bombs.

[tk2kewl]

19. It's easy if you try