corrente

Not counting anything but the dollars, that is.

Here's an interesting site that let's you ponder that particular cost in a variety of ways, using one of those clock counters that makes graphic at what speed individual dollars are being spent; it's dizzying.

How the figures are arrived at (estimates by the Congressional Budget Office) is made clear. There are comparisons to other kinds of expenditures we could have chosen instead, Pre-School, Kid's Health, Public Education, College Scholarships, and quaintly, Public Housing.

Better yet, you can click on specific towns and cities across the nation to find out what their portion of the cost is, and what it could have bought the citizens there.

Best of all, the intergenerational citizen-activists (their delightful description) have put on their site an inspiring quote from Dwight David Eisenhower; you remember him, four-star General, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in WW2, two term President of the United States at a time in our history when to be a Republican did not mean allegiance to a definition of America that excluded approximately 60 to 70 percent of its citizens.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

And yes, I am aware that using "bolded" text in a post is a form of screaming.

Here's another scream from the same Eisenhower statement:

The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children....This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from an iron cross.

Ever wondered what Eisenhower might have made of the Bush doctrine? Wonder no more:

Dwight Eisenhower, in 1953 after being shown plans to launch a preventive war against the Soviet Union; as quoted by Jonathan Schell, in the Nation (March 3, 2003)

"All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time....I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing."

Check out the website, and then send the link via email to all friends and family members. In the Bush era, we're all "the media" - we have to be.