The Costs of War

In Money

$3.8 billion in taxes from Indiana—and counting.
For this amount of money we could have provided care for the estimated 862,000 Indiana residents (14%) without health insurance and assistance to over 600,000 Hoosiers (10+%) living in poverty. What did we get instead? $164.9 million in cuts to Indiana state and local budgets.

In Lives Lost and Disrupted

2,340 Indiana reservists are currently serving in Iraq; 55 have died and 330 have been wounded.
Last year the surgeon general of the U.S. Army reported that 30% of U.S. troops develop mental health problems within 3-4 months of returning from Iraq.

The Results

Over 30,000 Iraqi and Afghani civilians have been killed, many more wounded, and both countries are in chaos. The White House is “scaling back ambitions to rebuild” in favor of ever more money for military operations. While we pay for all this, Bush and Cheney cronies reap fat profits from no-bid contracts to companies such as Halliburton.

And what have we gained?

Our country shamed in front of the whole world for the pornographically relished torture and abuse of ‘terrorist’ suspects, many of them later declared innocent.
Security for Americans? Well Al Quaeda wasn’t in Iraq before the war, but it sure is now. Meanwhile, Our civil liberties are being eroded daily in the name of the War on Terror.

Benefits? None! Cost? Huge! Bring the troops home now!

(Sources: U.S. Census Bureau;
www.insideindianabusiness.com;
www.nationalpriorites.org;
www.iraqbodycount.net; Guardian/UK)

What does war look like?
"Like the backside of a baboon. When the baboon is up in a tree, with its hind end facing us, there is the face of war exactly: scarlet, scaly, glazed, framed in a clotted, filthy wig." Hecuba