You just might have the chance to be a multi-multi-trillionaire!
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“So today, Mosul fell. Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq. The Iraqi government we “installed”, has now lost Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul and other large swaths of the country we invaded at the cost of thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and a couple trillion dollars. (What could your school district do with a trillion dollars?)”. — Michael Moore.
In order to understand what is happening these days in Iraq, you would probably need a magical chart and hundreds, or even more, ‘holy crap’ spells. How can anybody explain that after so many years of war against terror, Al Qaeda is so vibrant and powerful that it can overran the Iraqi army in a matter of hours?
How can it be explained that for a period of three years, the U.S. government helped the opposition in Syria, and now the same fighters are in Iraq waging their Holy War on a different soil?
It is true that the U.S.A. wasn’t behind I.S.I.L, a paramilitary group affiliated with Al Qaeda? It is true that this organization was sporadically financed by U.S. tax payers through the cooperation of various rebel armies in Syria. So, if I.S.I.L. is a friend of Syrian opposition sponsored by the U.S. government, then we can’t use the old maxim “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Now it is more likely “the friend of my friend is my enemy,” which is totally insane.
On the day when Mosul fall to terrorist hands, the great movie director Michael Moore said that after a couple trillion U.S. dollars were spent on installing a government in Iraq, the soldiers just threw away theirs weapons and uniforms and fled the city.
Moore is asking his fellows Americans what a couple trillion dollars would mean for the benefit of the educational system in the U.S.A. Well, we can ask that question over and over again, and we can end with a trillion answers, but that still that wouldn’t justify this tragi-comic situation of how many lives were lost and how much money was spent.
I have some suggestions, and even with my sore experience in terms of state economy and foreign policy, I think I can find five better ways to spend the money.
To be clear, a couple trillion dollars is a huge amount of money, an unthinkable pile of cash to be measured.
- If this money had been spent on economic development, the great financial crisis of 2008 wouldn’t have happened, or it could have been easily managed.
- There are 2.5 million people in New York who are having trouble paying for food. With a couple trillion dollars it would be an easy task to eradicate poverty not only in New York but in the U.S.A. overall. Imagine how this sentence sounds, “no hungry Americans anymore.” It sounds great, doesn’t it!?
- Maybe it’s even better to start fighting homelessness. Millions of U.S. citizens have nowhere to live, and many of them can’t pay for any kind of accommodation. If the government invested that money to build new homes, it would also have a positive impact on the building industry and the domestic economy.
- The health care and education systems could definitely benefit from a couple trillion dollars, or perhaps social affairs, or retirement funds, or you name it.
- Now, if The U.S. government insists that the money of its own citizens be spent abroad, then I can suggest the cash being spent in my country or region.
The Republic of Macedonia and the Balkans would simply sweep up this money in a minute. The U.S.A. can easily spend a couple trillion dollars in southeastern Europe and have exactly the same result as Iraq. Our corrupt governments would do the same job as their colleague’s in Iraq, or it would be better to say that they would do exactly nothing, as Iraq has as well.
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If the U.S. seeks to spend its money ridiculously then that’s their problem. But next time it would be best if a couple trillion dollars were spent on something that really matters. If has to be on feeding the war machine then so be it. Maybe it would be even better if part of those trillions of dollars get spent on purchasing protection equipment for U.S. soldiers. Modern panzer velvets, which are allegedly “very expensive for the budget” of the U.S. army, could save hundreds or even thousands of soldiers’ lives. If, after all these years, the U.S. invasion of Iraq still seems non-sense, it might have helped if the death toll of U.S. soldiers had been less by a couple thousand.
Seriously, here is you chance to be that multi-multi-trillionaire. If just a few good men tried to persuade those responsible in the government…
Photo: AMagill/Flickr
How about stopping all foreign aid, defunding the UN and abolishing any Federal agency that violates the Bill Of Rights? Sell off the buildings, vehicles and any other assets and apply that money to our national debt, or put it into Social Security along with a “hands off” provision, meaning those funds cannot be used for any other purpose.