War on Terror vs War on Poverty - Essay Example

Earth is made up of many species of beings that maintain an ecological equilibrium for millions of years. A dominant species evolved called humans who have taken control over the planet’s resources. Humanity has battled to achieve material and social evolution in order to obtain prosperity and a better standard of living. The problem civilizations continue to encounter is constant conflict, ambition and politically induced warfare that many times resulted in wars. In the 20th century World War I, World War II and Vietnam were disastrous events whose economic value in damages is measured in the trillions of dollars. Appendix A shows a table of the cost of various war events. This essay analyzes the impact the current war on terror has on the worldwide battle against hunger. The official data the war between the United States and its allies commence was after the terrorist attacks on the twin towers in which two commercial airplanes were used as missiles by suicidal bombers who took hostile all the civilians abort these aircrafts. Thousands of people lost their lives and the top financial epicenter in the world was shutdown causing chaos. The airline transportation and energy industry were hit hard as well as the entire global economy since it entered into disequilibrium. The efforts of the developed nation that today compose G8 were not doing enough to battle world hunger prior to the war, after the start on Terror the battle against hunger became even less important to the developed world and huge amounts of funds were diverted for war related activities. Around the world there are many places in which its inhabitants simply do not have anything to eat and suffer from malnutrition to the level that people are dying on hunger which is why the existence of this atrocity and the efforts to combat it is called the war on hunger. In the southern part of Africa below the Sahara there are over 33 million children living in malnutrition in a sub-human standard of living; in 2006 five million children in Africa died from malnutrition a figure that represents 40% of the deaths worldwide (Country Insight, 2007). Society has to stop this immediately and bring a resolution to end this war in order to ensure everyone on earth has a plate of food on the table. Other regions that are suffering the victims of the battle against hunger are the overpopulated country of India, the Middle East region and Latin America. The war of poverty requires trillions of dollars as well a plan to develop the economies of these nation for them to become self-sustainable. The current commanding chief of the USA president George Bush declared war on the Middle East to intercept Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and other radical terrorist organizations that control the subterranean economy and militia in the Middle East region. After the 1998 war on Afghanistan declared by the democratic president Bill Clinton the opium production increased by a factor of 8x to finance the military activities through the drug trade of thousands of kilos of heroin. The drug trade of heroin and cocaine in Latin America reinforce the militia’s power and the Middle East militia was able to finance the biggest attack on America since the Japanese declaration of war on December 7, 1941 on Pearl Harbor which led to the unfortunate US military move of releasing a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (CountryGrams, 2007). The War on Terror was a retaliation move by the US with the support of its allies for the 9/11 abomination. The economic effect of the war has devastated the American society and has not allowed the G8 develop nation members to concentrate their efforts to battle the true war that must be won whose objective is to eradicate world hunger and poverty in our planet. The federal yearly budget has always used a large percentage of the yearly resources of the confederation. In 2007 budget for its military units controlled by the Pentagon was $450 billion. The figure is high and the “War on Terror” added an additional $200 billion dollars of the budget which is translates into the military eating up one-sixth of the nation yearly governmental spending (Hargreaves, 2006). The effect the war is having is not allowing the US government to combat battle within the nation or in foreign underdeveloped nations. In the United States the overall population of 300 million citizens has 12.5% of its households living under the $19,977 federal poverty line a metric that is distorted since it has not been updated in 42 implying that poverty in the US is much more rampant (Grier, 2007). This large group of people does not have enough to survive in a nation in which the cost of living is one of the highest in the world. From 2002 to 2008 the war on terror has resulted in the tax collection money of its citizens to be directed for military affair instead of the social, educational and infrastructure projects the American citizens need. The dollar value of resources allocated to the Iraq war amount to a total of $21,500 per American which was lost due to this event (CNN, 2008). The scary thing is that in the next 10 years if no changes and adjustment are made to the US policy American household will pay more for the war than the real domestic gross per capita of the nation of $38,000 per year (CountryWatch, 2007). American is suffering and the amounts of money being directed to fight the global war on hunger have dissipated since the War of Terror is draining too many economic resources. We must consider that the trillion dollar figures of accumulated US spending on the War on Terror do not consider the funds spend on the war by the allies of the United States which include on of the richest and most economically stable nation in the world in Great Britain who is totally committed to the war since there have multiple terrorist attacks in the 21st century against the capital city of London. The increase drug trade as a consequence of the war is a factor that also is contributing to increasing poverty worldwide since the subterranean economical activity of the drug trade freezes trillions of dollars of the individual cash flow that will never be registered or accounted for in the legal economic systems. Money that could be use on food and shelter is going into the hands of a minority group which controls the drug trade who are becoming rich on the misery of others. In the legitimate economy the same inequality problem exist and over 80% of the world’s wealth is controlled by a minority group of less than 5% of the global population. The African continent has a population of 885 million humans with the majority of its residents living in extreme poverty (Clubtravel, 2008). Starvation and diseases such as malaria and the AIDS virus are destroying the African society. Children are the biggest victims of this social disaster. In the Southern Sahara African region over 5 million children died of malnutrition last year a metric that represents 40% of the worldwide deaths in 2007 (reference). There is a grand necessity for all developed nations to join forces and proactively combat the fight against hunger and the development of the region through foreign direct investments. Foreign direct investments must increase to solve the infrastructure of water and energy across the continent as well as agricultural development that will spark an industrialization movement in Africa. A solution that would greatly help Africa that is a feasible industrial operation which involves agriculture as its origin is an invention created in the developed nation of Australia. A company called Payparus Australia invented a new type of paper called banana ply paper whose prime material is banana trunks. Africa has 53% of the banana tree plantations in the world. This new start up company is the type of opportunity whose development could be accelerated with the injection of money. The G8 could buy up the entire firm help with the management and turn it into a state-owned subsidiary. This innovative project could give Africa the highest market share of a multi-billion dollar industry. This project is so good since it requires small capital investments per manufacturing site, the energy cost are 99% than typical paper manufacturing and the plantation provides 100% of the water needed since the banana trunk is made of 90% water. The War on Terror is not allowing the developing nations to transfer its funds were is most needed in order to combat poverty. The overall cost of the war is in the trillions of dollars, if half that money went towards nations in need of help then some serious progress could be achieved on the war on poverty. References CultureGrams (2007). Japan. Retrieved July 16, 2007 from CultureGrams database. Clubtravel.com (2008). The continents of the world. Available from [Accessed 7 April 2008]. CultureGrams (2008). Country Profile: Japan. Available from [8 April 2008]. Country Insight (2008). Region: Africa. Available from [Accessed 8 April 2008]. CountryWatch (2008). Country Profile: United States. Available from [8 April 2008]. Grier, P. (2006). The Rising Price of the War on Terror. The Christian Science Monitor. Available from [Accessed 8 April 2008]. Hargreaves, H. (2007). War on Terror may cost $2.4 trillion. CNN Money. Available from [Accessed 9 April 2008]. Appendix A: Cost of War Events in the 20th Century War Event Cost World War I $205 billion World War II $3.11 trillion Vietnam War $532 billion (Grier, 2007). Read More