How much is the Iraq war really costing you? According to the National Priorities Project (NRP), which tracks the amount of money spent in the Iraq war, it’s costing quite a bit. But that’s not the whole story, because if you’re a student, you’re paying for the war in ways you never imagined.
According to the NRP, the total amount of money spent on the Iraq war now tops $246.7 billion and is increasing at a rate of around $175,000 per minute. Tennessee’s share of this onerous bill is over $3.8 billion.
Perhaps that’s a small price to pay to build a democracy, or rather, a Bush-style democracy where citizens can be arrested without a warrant, held indefinitely without legal consultation, and tortured.
But let’s not get on the tangent of Republican family values; this is about the monetary cost of war, not the moral cost.
Can the U.S. really afford to spend that kind of money? America is the richest country in the world so a mere $247 billion should be no problem, right?
That really depends on how you look at it. Here’s one way. Let’s look at the U.S. national debt and then decide.
As of 2:03 p.m., Saturday, March 11, 2006, the U.S. national debt was $8,284,872,846,561.39 and growing at a rate of $2.17 billion per day since September 30, 2005. Here’s another number: $27,732.17. That’s your share of the national debt. It’s not that you’re special; every citizen in America owes the same amount.
Should the U.S. be burning money on a war it can’t afford? Isn’t fiscal responsibility supposed to be one of the pillars of the Republican Party platform? Apparently all of America’s accountants have abandoned the party which now controls the White House, both bodies of congress, and increasingly, the judicial branch.
Surely the government could find better ways to spend taxpayer’s money. What if Tennessee’s $3.8 billion share of the Iraq war were put to some sort of constructive rather than destructive use? The easiest way to put that possibility into perspective is through an example relevant to college students.
If Tennessee’s share of the Iraq war were instead applied toward college tuition, over 213,000 four-year scholarships could be created for needy and gifted students attending ETSU.
Perhaps instead of scholarships the money could be used to buy textbooks. Using an estimate of $375 per semester for books and two semesters of attendance per year, ETSU’s roughly 12,000 students could receive free books for around 425 years.
If that seems like overkill, there are certainly other ways a university like ours could use extra cash.
It cost a lot of money to build the one functional clock we have on campus and its discordant chimes aren’t even loud enough to tell us the time in most buildings. With $3 billion we could have a carillon on every corner.
As scary as the last suggestion sounds, it’s not nearly as frightening as what is actually occurring. Rather than working to create the utopian scenario imagined above (where education is actually funded) the administration has decided to put the cost of war on the backs of college students by slashing $12 billion from student loan programs. Those cuts mean higher interest rates for Stafford and PLUS loans taken out by students and parents. Not only has the current administration figured out a way to lie the country into a war, they’ve figured out a way to foist the cost onto Americans who can afford it the least. The students and parents who are too poor to pay for college costs out of pocket will be financing the cost of the Iraq war for years to come.
Say hello to the Republican version of the American Dream.

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