Critical thinking on Memorial Day

I think we can all agree that thanking military personnel is warranted, Memorial Day or not. But what we don't do enough is analyze what they (and their families) are asked to do. Civilians are asked to do next to nothing to support our wars in Iraq (4,404 American soldiers dead, approx.) and Afghanistan (1,076 dead) -- well, we feel the economic toll, and future generations will have to actually pay for them. But our all-volunteer military is asked to do more than their fair share. As of yesterday, we've spent $1 trillion in Iraq/Afghanistan. Are we putting them in harm's way for good reason?

If you're persuaded more by economic factors, Derrick Crowe flags some poignant statistics.

According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s (CEPR) Dean Baker:

"In standard economic models, defense spending is a direct drain on the economy, reducing efficiency, slowing growth and costing jobs. …[S]tandard economic models…project that the increase in defense spending since 2000 will cost the economy close to two million jobs in the long run."

Baker’s point in his article was that groups that scream about potential "job loss" from government "interference" never put that "loss" in any context. Government spending does stimulate economic activity during a downturn. The question is, how stimulative is one type of spending versus another? So let’s make sure we’re playing fair and put this in some perspective in terms of job creation.

It turns out that, excluding tax cuts for consumption, war spending is the least stimulative type of government spending.

An October 2007 study by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) found that per $1 billion invested in the following fields, you create wildly different numbers of jobs:

Defense: 8,555 jobs
Construction for home weatherization/infrastructure: 12,804 jobs
Health care: 12,883 jobs
Education: 17,687 jobs
Mass transit: 19,795 jobs

So if you take $1 billion in taxpayer dollars and spend it on war versus on building energy efficient homes and other infrastructure, the opportunity cost for that spending is 4,249 potential jobs. Spending it on war versus mass transit costs you 11,240 potential jobs.

This is getting unreasonable, to say the least.

If that isn't enough, this Washington Post headline says a lot about the tenuous alliances we've made that aren't built to last, but to serve as a foreign policy Band-Aid: In Afghan region, U.S. spreads the cash to fight the Taliban. I'm not so naive as to believe this is the first time civilians in a war-torn country have been bought out, but then let's never kid ourselves that Democracy is on the march. Like it is for many of us, in Afghanistan, it's about who's got their economic interests in mind.

There are many factors pushing the war machine forward. Those forces can seem overwhelming. But the onus to end war is ultimately ours. We have to decide how we engage our country's often militaristic view of the world. Where is the drone leading us? What does indefinite detention of prisoners mean for our future? How are we actively inflaming the Muslim world in the name of security? What does national security mean in the 21st century?

The only way we can survive, and thrive, as a people is to think. What are our priorities? What would you do with $1 trillion?