We try not to get our political analysis from T-shirts and bumper stickers — really, we try — but an idea isn’t wrong just because it comes printed on cotton or plastic. So we were willing to take a look when we got an e-mail this week from a reader who is selling Iraq war T-shirts that might hit some Bush supporters where they can feel it: in the wallet.
The ringer tees offered up by pediatrician turned international health and bioterrorism expert Joel Selanikio show the current price tag for the Iraq war on the front — he’s got it at $6 billion a month, which is in the ballpark of the number U.S. military leaders gave Congress in November — while the back of each shirt shows an alternative way in which the money could be spent. One says that a year of Iraq war spending could cover the salaries of 1,000 teachers in every state of the Union plus the District of Columbia for the next 25 years. Another says a year of Iraq money could cover vaccinations for every child on Earth for more than 30 years. Another says … well, you get the idea.
As much we like the T-shirts, we enforce a strict dress code here at War Room, and we’ve always been more technologically than sartorially savvy anyway. Selanikio’s site pointed us in the right direction: costofwar.com. The site features a ticker that tracks — at the speed of the pennies column of a gas pump these days — the appropriated costs for the war in Iraq. And then, like Selanikio’s T-shirts, it offers alternative uses for the money appropriated for the war so far: Fund all AIDS programs worldwide for 17 years; pay for more than 23 million kids to attend a year of Head Start; build more than 1.6 million units of new public housing; fully fund global anti-hunger programs for the next seven years. For the more inwardly focused among us, there’s this: When we checked last night, the war has cost each and every man, woman and child in America $712 so far.
We’re saving up for one of costofwar.com’s big LED tickers for our hometown — it will be just the thing for the Fourth of July parade — but in the meantime, we’re satisfying ourselves with something on a smaller scale: a free cost-of-war widget for the Dashboard on our Mac.
