Imagine this: Suppose, at the begining of the war, instead of invading, we had announced that we would pay every man, woman and child in Iraq $5000 dollars (American); all they had to do was depose Saddam Hussein, and install a (nominally) democratic government. Can you imagine the outcry here in the U.S.? What?! Give away over $100 billion???
Do you think the Iraqis would have done it? I dont know either, but I think for many Iraqis, 5000 $US would be nothing to sneeze at. Hell, here in America we gave away millions to our own rich for a mere 600 pieces of silver, and that was more of a payday loan than anything.
It would have been a bargain, though. We've since spent over three times that, to say nothing of the lives lost on both sides. We all would have benefitted from such a plan, excepting perhaps Halliburton.
The crazy thing is that this is America, a land where most people are actually convinced that they can buy whatever it is that they want. I guess what we wanted more than anything was a bar fight.
Yee-ha.
Incidentally, using the figure given in the link above, so far the war has cost us over $1000 for every man, woman and child in America. How's that for a bargain?
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2 comments:
damn thats alot. i wish they had given that money back to the people who paid it in.
js
They did give $10,000 bounties in Afghanistan for turning in each other. That is where we got most of the prisoners in Guantanamo.
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