The True Cost of War

Here are some staggering stats I found just by a quick search:

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations:

- Over 900 Million people in the developing world are hungry (read: starving to death)

(More than the combined populations of the US, Canada, and the European Union)

(The Director of the WFP says since 2007 it has reached more than a Billion!)

- 25,000 people (adults and children) die every day from hunger and related causes

Just to put this in perspective. The budget of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) in 2008 was just under 3 Billion dollars (2.9). With it, they fed 73 Million people in 78 countries, less than a tenth of the world's hungry. Guardian Article

If this math holds, it would take over ten times this budget to feed the world's hungry. Let estimate: 60 Billion dollars.

The war in Iraq has already cost the United States over 600 Billion dollars. (And some estimate that it could reach 2 or 3 Trillion before its all said and done.) What it has cost already is 10 times a generous estimate of what it would cost to feed the world's hungry.... 10 TIMES!!!

So, upon whom is the real war being wagged? I submit that each day the 25-26 thousand human beings (many of whom are children) who die of starvation are deaths that are preventable and the cost of war is greater than its financial impact. The cost of war is millions of preventable deaths.

That is why we pray and work for the day when tanks will be beaten into tractors!!