I'd like to offer a little anecdote. Several years ago there was much complaint about the usefulness of the Million Man March. If, detractors said, one million black men truly wanted to make a difference, then they would take 100 dollars out of their pockets and create a college scholarship fund. This kind of effort would be respectable. In a little known survey, scholars from Howard University found that over 40% of the participants at the march were college graduates. That means, given an average college cost of 20,000, that 8 billion dollars in college money had already been spent successfully. 80 times as much the complainers determined to take seriously. And still the march was derided. Sometimes the noise of new money promised masks the power of old money already spent.
These days, I hear a great deal of flak which annoys me a bit, about Haliburton this and Bechtel that. I thought I'd like to toss in a few comparative numbers in for spite. I realize this isn't particularly visionary, but it's something I haven't heard said much elsewhere.
The estimated cost of rebuilding Iraq will be about 20 billion dollars per year for about 5 years. The cost of warring against Iraq up to this point has been about 63 billion dollars. That 63 billion is mostly supplies, boots, combat pay, fuel and logistics. It's not the basic military stuff. That's already paid for. It is both comforting and disturbing to know that these are not very large dollars where the United States of America is concerned.
The International Red Cross has estimated that 2 billion in humanitarian aid will be sufficient for Iraq acording to a quote I heard last Thursday on NPR. Unfortunately I cannot find an update on that figure anywhere. Estimates vary depending on whom you ask. Still, let us be over the hand wringing over Bechtel's 700 million dollar contract, shall we? This is not an extraordinarily large job.
According to the American Red Cross:
The highest natural disaster death toll in U.S. history was caused by the Galveston, Texas, hurricane of 1900, which killed an estimated 6,000 people. The most expensive disaster is the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. The destructive events will cost more than $997 million in disaster aid. The largest mobilization of volunteers for a disaster relief operation was also in response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, when a total of 54,577 workers arrived on the scene to provide relief.
The State of California's annual budget is about 100 billion dollars. Iraq has fewer people. So we'll spend about a fifth as much. Granted, we are not going to take them to California standards, but the point is that 20 billion per year is not so much money that it will come anywhere near breaking the American budget. Given that Bush has conceded about 250 billion from his latest tax cut, there seems to be more than enough to go around.
I am looking forward to seeing how much money the United Nations will raise for all efforts at rebuilding Iraq, be they humanitarian or infrastructure. We know how much it costs, we know how much American companies are getting, we know how much America can afford. Let us now see some economic leadership from other coalitions.