| > Would humanity never ever have invented these technologies without war ? Not all economic growth is good growth. There's bad growth too. Like anything else, war has costs: (1) Price tag. For example, "The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting," quoted from The Washington Post (March 28, 2013): http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/study-... (2) Harms/damages. For example, in the Afghan and Iraq wars, we have 6,600 dead Americans. Of the 1.6M veterans of these wars, 670,000 have been awarded disability, and another 100,000 are pending. Source: McClatchy DC (March 14, 2013): http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/14/185880/millions-went-t... Harms inflicted on US troops include: amputations, traumatic brain injuries, mental illness, suicide, rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. Harms inflicted on Iraq include: 150,000 to 400,000 dead, 600,000 orphans living in the streets, 1.3 million internally displaced, 1 million displaced to Syria, 100,000 imprisoned and tortured with no due process, 25% without clean water, 30% unemployment, etc., etc. (3) Opportunity costs: I think President Dwight D. Eisenhower said it best in 1953-- "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. "It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. "The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. "It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. "It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. "We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. "We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. "This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. "This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." |