Whether or not you support the war in Iraq, you should be aware of its costs--especially the effect on the most vulnerable in our society.This is an excerpt from a speech by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1953. My guess is that 55 years later, the numbers would need updating but the truth is still there.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money along. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
"The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement.
"We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people."
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