A look at what $456 Billion will buy, besides our current war. I was struck most by #9, which states,
According to World Bank estimates, $54 billion a year would eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally by 2015, while $30 billion would provide a year of primary education for every child on earth.
Imagine if, after 9/11, we decided to spend $500 Billion dollars on a campaign to end hunger and educate every kid on earth. Now take that initiative and multiply it by the amount of goodwill we had around the world at that time. Think we could have come up with another $500 Billion dollars from the rest of the First World? Of course. Since we’ve got a little extra now, let’s throw in eliminating a few diseases. There would still be people who wanted to blow us up, but I bet there’d be less of ’em if the First World was spending a trillion dollars on health and education, instead of spending that money to shoot people. If nothing else I could have been proud of my country for taking the moral high ground and trying.