Thursday, May 27, 2010

Billion dollar theatres

$1100 million gets you a year of Canadian Forces operations in Afghanistan (annualised over 2001-2011). That's how much it costs to support the combat operations of ~2500 Canadian troops in war-addled Khandahar province, population 913 000.

$1100 million gets you nearly a week of US operations in the entirety of Iraq, with a population of ~25 million. That's a week's funding for 112 000 troops occupying an entire country with a still-active insurgency on the other side of the world.

$1100 million and counting covers 3 days of security for 20 people in one of the a priori safest and cleanest cities on the planet.

We might interpret this several ways. One, it confirms that Conservatives are pants pissing cowards and martial fetishists (funny how these two things seem to go hand in hand avec Cons). Or following the Con logic here, it might also reveal the true cost of security in low risk enviroments, causing one to wonder just what the hell we're doing funding various wars with even less.

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