The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

One day of the war in Iraq costs $720 million. How would you spend it?

The Iraq war has certainly been costly in terms of lives lost, with thousands of U.S. military personnel dead, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have been killed. Also, the economic costs are far greater than most people imagine, with more than $1 trillion tax dollars spent in the first four years of the war, says the American Friends Service Commitee (AFSC).

One trillion dollars equals $720 million spent each day, or $500,000 (Tk 3.40 crore) per minute. The taxpayer money spent on the war is displacing millions of Iraqis and destroying their hospitals and schools instead of supporting health care, education and housing for people in our own communities, it says.

The AFSC is launching a national project to highlight the economic cost of the war and demand that Congress shift war funding to support human needs here and real solutions in Iraq.

The AFSC is a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) affiliated organisation which works for social justice, peace and reconciliation, abolition of the death penalty, and human rights, and provides humanitarian relief. The group was founded in 1917 as a combined effort by American members of the Religious Society of Friends and assisted civilian victims of war.

Because Quakers traditionally oppose violence in all of its forms and therefore refuse to serve in the military, the AFSC's original mission was to provide conscientious objectors (COs) to war with a constructive alternative to military service. In 1947 AFSC received the Nobel Peace Prize along with the British Friends Service Council, now called Quaker Peace and Social Witness, on behalf of all Quakers worldwide.