Bush could transform America's security against terrorists with goodwill if he spent its billions on helping the needy.

Sunday March 30, 2003

The Observer

A fascinating transcript of a background briefing on the costs of the Iraq war appeared on the US Defence Department website last week. It featured a bumbling but, regrettably, unnamed official who fluffed his lines, lost his cool and mixed up the slide show while trying to explain the $62.2 billion (£40bn) requested from Congress to finance the fighting.

The briefing provided a grim farce to start the week but was remarkably revealing about the lack of precision in Pentagon estimates and the fact that more than half of the money had already been spent on "coercive diplomacy", the deployment of troops.

More important, perhaps, the official confirmed that the sums were based on the assumption that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's strategy of "a short, high intensity conflict" would achieve victory within weeks. "We're not talking about several months, let's put it that way," said the official testily.

As he spoke, it was becoming plain that the coalition forces were meeting much greater opposition than had been expected, and the military and political establishments on both sides of the Atlantic were beginning to prepare their publics for a long and arduous campaign. By the end of the week it was announced that a further 120,000 troops would be sent to the Gulf, and it was becom ing plain that the figure of $62bn, which only covers US military spending until the end of October, was already wildly out.

By comparison Britain's estimated bill of £3bn is relatively small. The initial total to be spent by both countries, however, $66.8bn, is a stupefying sum. Yet Laurence Meyer, the former governor of the US Federal Reserve Board, suggests this may be only the first payment in a US commitment lasting up to 10 years and requiring $50bn a year.

The cost to the US taxpayer of the entire Iraq adventure may reach trillions of dollars, adding a surreal aura to the President's plans to go on cutting taxes.

George W. Bush is either one of the most optimistic human beings who ever lived or one of the most stupid. Either way, the toe-curling religious exhibitionism of his administration seems downright odd when you compare the amount of money being blown in Iraq with the costs of solving some of the world's largest problems.

Of course, the contrast between military spending and aid has often been made. The difference in 2003 is the pace at which the first is outstripping the second. As the gap widens, the moral burden for America, and to lesser extent the other wealthy G7 powers, increases, and because we in the West are financing the war it involves each one of us.

It is argued, reasonably, that every country should be allowed the means to defend itself and as the world's policeman, the US is bound to record a very large military budget. Yet the sums spent daily in Iraq are an indictment of the way we run our affairs.

Take Africa. Three years ago world leaders signed up to Millennium Development Goals, which estimated it would require spending of between $25bn and $35bn every year to raise Africans to the level of health and welfare enjoyed in other parts of the world. At present the wealthy countries spend about $14bn in sub-Saharan Africa, $1.3bn of it provided by the US. Compare this to the $1.26bn cost of a single stealth bomber, and you begin to see the picture.

Aids is now claiming 5,500 lives a day around the world, more even than the Black Death. Yet the United Nations programme for combating HIV and Aids is dispersing a mere $3bn this year. The unmet needs amount to a further $1.7bn, so an awful lot of people are going without treatment, dying early and leaving children to fend for themselves.

This is one of the worst health problems humanity has ever faced but we in the West appear to care little about it.

The White House puts the cost of a single cruise missile at $800,000. The opening blitz of 320 of them launched at Baghdad cost $256 million. The price of just two of these missiles would build an entire new village for the charity SOS Children's Villages or feed 270,000 hungry people in Angola for a month.

The UN, however, constantly faces shortfalls in its consolidated appeals for specific emergencies. In Ethiopia, where 11 million people are at risk from hunger, only half their food needs have been pledged by the developed world. In neighbouring Eritrea, two thirds of the population face varying levels of starvation, but only 2% of the $163m appealed for by UN has been found.

The story is the same all over Africa. The unfolding disaster in South Africa, where there is a 29% prevalence of Aids, is almost too large to comprehend. But the most compelling argument against the war spending is Unesco's estimate that 115 million children around the world are getting no education. Educating them would cost $5.6bn a year, less than a tenth of what the allies are likely to spend in the Gulf by October.

One can only dream at the effect on relations between America and the rest of the world if a US President announced that his fortunate nation would put these 115 million kids through school.

This and measures like it would ensure America's security and its future with much greater certainty than the war. And that is why, when Bush stands in prayer and asks God to bless America, it is beginning to stick in the craw.