|
Now, Let's face facts: The war in Iraq is all about oil - or energy which as far as the Bush Administration is concerned is still about oil. Oh sure, as with lots of wonderful things the Bush administration will give lip-service to alternative energy (Switch grass, anyone?) but in reality little or no money will actually be allocated to it. Just remember with W that Black is always White. No Child left Behind actually means every child Left behind. And so on... You can find your own examples without my help.
The United States has now spent a half a trillion dollars on the war and I was thinking of better uses for it. One thing I figured out that could have been bought with that half a trillion that was spent on Iraq: Energy independence. If every penny of that half a trillion were spent on Solar cells or Windmills or fuel efficient vehicle technology or biofuels or this or that ... again, endless examples, but seriously, we'd be quite a ways away from worrying about the Middle East. We could just treat them all like we treat Central Africa (where there is bloodshed but unfortunately for them, no fossil fuels). With our wind mills and solar cells in place we could sympathize with their plight and leave it at that. Just like in Africa. Of course, that would only work until they all build their nuclear bombs. Then we'd have to start paying attention again, but mutual assured destruction still works and with places like Iran we are more assured to destroy them with our many, many nukes than the reverse. I tried to price out windmills so I could plug that figure into the half a trillion and tell you how many windmills we could get. Curiously enough, windmill merchants are pretty cagey about actually revealing their prices. Hmmm. I wonder why that is. Alright, I know why that is. It's because if you saw the real price right off the bat you'd get sticker shock and click on to the next site. They probably are expensive, I believe. However, because of economy of scale if a whole lot of windmills or solar cells were being produced the price would come down just because it would be so much cheaper to produce them en masse. Well, I'm still going to get one. But I will wait until the prices come down. Back when I used to smoke, I would use packs of cigarettes as my financial unit measure, you know, how many packs of cigarettes is that? I'm not exactly sure how much they cost these days but somebody told me five bucks a pack up in Minnesota - where I used to live. So, with that math at my old rate of a pack a day I could smoke for approximately one hundred million days without having to worry about going out for another carton. Maybe if the secret of immortality is discovered I could actually do that. But wait! That might be another thing that a half a trillion dollars could have bought instead of the disaster in Iraq - immortality. And if not immortality it sure would have gone a long way towards curing a disease or two - like cancer. The next time you're thinking about how great it was that we got Saddam out of power please think about which you would have liked more, Saddam out of power or a cure for cancer. Ironically, there really is a pretty good chance that you'll get cancer someday. You're going to die of something so odds are good that it could be cancer. When you are dying of cancer you can think about that. Or we could all have had a little fun with the money ... Lap dances! - lots and lots of lap dances. A half a trillion dollars that was spent on Iraq could have better been spent on adult entertainment at strip clubs. Let me get out my calculator here ... five hundred million divided by an average of twenty dollars per dance ... that would be ... twenty five million! Wow, that's sure a hell of a lot of happiness. Of course, when I think about it this would mean that lap dances would become a government program and so, of course, it would be run with the usual government inefficiency. Crap. We'd all have to fill out multiple forms and put with excessive delays just so we could have one naked woman crawling around on us. Hey wait, I think I might be willing to put up with that. Okay, sure. I can live with the government running the free lap dance program because it's sure a lot better than no free lap dance program. Right? And unlike the war in Iraq nobody would be losing limbs or dying prematurely, except possibly from too much fun! Nobodys going to be blown up or kidnaped or anything like that. So, let's do it. Let's bring our troops home right now and start spending all that war money on the government lap dance program. I'll even be magnanamous about this and say that our returning troops can be first in line. They deserve it, don't you think? About the author:
Steve Sommers is the author of Breakfast with the Antichrist. Read his new novel, Rexroi, On-line at http://www.blogcharm.com/rexroi
|
