Health care, not war!

A commentary in the Oct. 24 New York Times said something the anti-war movement has been saying since the war began three-and-a-half years ago: that the money used on the war should be used for social services instead.

Nicholas D. Kristof reported that new estimates put the war’s overall cost at somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. He cites the hidden costs of disability payments, re-enlistment bonuses and the replacement of military equipment—”since the Pentagon says they are being worn out at up to six times the peacetime rate.”

He says that the $2 trillion amount is four times the additional cost needed to provide health insurance for uninsured people in the U.S. for the next 10 years.

This in a period when health care in the United States is more and more a luxury of the rich, when health care is the main sticking issue in most union negotiations with the bosses, when non-union jobs with health care are becoming rarer and rarer.

The National Priorities Project provides even more figures on the war’s cost to communities. The Web site reports that the money that has already been spent to occupy Iraq could have hired 5 million additional public-school teachers. It could have built 3 million additional housing units. It could have provided 16 million four-year college scholarships. (www.costofwar.com)

Meanwhile, in Iraq United Press International reported Oct. 21 that the country’s health care system is now in shambles, and that half the current deaths from disease and violence could have been prevented with adequate care. Before the two Gulf wars and 12 years of sanctions, health care in Iraq was free and of high quality.

With these figures in mind, and with the November elections around the corner, it is extremely timely that the Troops Out Now Coalition has issued a call for anti-imperialist unity and action on the fourth anniversary of the war, March 17, 2007.

The call reads in part: “The two interrelated processes that will end this criminal war and occupation are its defeat by the resistance of the Iraqi people on the one hand, and on the other the mass struggle of the people right here in the streets of this country. ... At this juncture, our challenge as an anti-war movement has never been clearer.”

The call stresses the connection among all imperialist wars—from those against the people of Asia and the Middle East, to those against workers and the oppressed at home. “Our challenge from here on is to help facilitate something that is as necessary as it is natural—the merging of the struggle against the wars at home with the wars abroad. ... We must find the tactics that bring more workers, both organized and unorganized, into the center of the struggle against the war, bearing in mind that ordinary workers may understand more about imperialism than some full-time activists do.” To read and endorse the call go to www.troopsoutnow.org.