Time Odyssey

Time to digress. CNN Moneytoday published an article that claims the long term implication of the US’s war in Iraq could topple $2.7 TRILLION dollars. I dunno about you but $2.7T could buy one heck of an acquscum unit for the Mississippi River :) Regardless – as part of one of my doctoral residences at the University of Phoenix we had a professor that specializes in qualitative research studies. As part of our lectures he was talking about the concept that today’s wars are no longer really based on military advantage but rather are culturally derived and therefore should be fought on cultural basis.

This raises an interesting quandry in terms of how such a cultural war should be fought. Not with conventional weapons obviously but here is the rub: We know that to influence culture the key aspect of any change in society is to influence the young. Essentially, s/he who controls the school system controls the future. BUT … we’ve seen from the Canadian examplethat by trying to submerse cultural diversity we in fact lose key aspects of what those diversifications mean for the human condition as a whole.

Also, from a socio-economic standpoint $2.7T dollars invested into culturally based programs designed to sway public opinion can translate into economic opportunities which have far more lasting benefits than the short term purchase and ‘consumption’ of various incendiary devices which are neither sustainable nor recyclable (the ultimate form of consumer waste I guess you could look at it).

When I hear numbers through like $2.7T thrown around my first thought is to consider that this generally represents upwards of 2700 $1B mega projects each of which could represent a some valuable component towards increases in GDP even assuming a modest ongoing ROI of 3%. Every bomb dropped however represents a lost economic opportunity as there is no ROI on wanton destruction. It represents both lost revenue and lost opportunity benefits that could have been achieved by sinking that money into something else. 

Let’s put this further into perspective. NASA’s budget request for FY 2009is $17.3B or roughly 1/150th of what the war in Iraq is projected to cost. Now, as just one example, tell me how a doubling of NASA’s budget for the purposes of creating a Middle East Space Agency and bringing a country like Iraq into the scientific fold of space exploration couldn’t have possibly accomplished as much or more as bombing the hell out of everything  considering the relative size of Iraq’s population compared to that of the US and the proportional budget allocations for scientific and space research thereof (not to mention the human casualties to date). Nevermind – rhetorical question. – K