A couple of reports on the financial cost of the war: ?4 billion for us Brits, and $80 for the US. I make the total $86.25, or ?55 billion. On other terms, this is:
- About $5 billion more than the GDP of Ireland.
- 85% of this year’s NHS budget.
- Over 44 times the total annual budget of the World Food Programme.
- Approximately 86? times the total annual budget of the UN High Commission for Refugees.
- The combined national debt of God knows how many African countries.
Add-on the environmental cost, cost to world trade, etc. In the middle of the worst global recession, how can we possibly afford this?
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed.
– From 1984 by George Orwell, Chapter seventeen.