Cost of Obama's Afghan surge

Obama's surge, sending an additional 30,000 troops to wage war in Afghanistan, will cost at least $30 billion dollars -- over the next year that's $57,000 every minute.

It costs $1 million a year to send one US soldier to Afghanistan.

The United States accounts for 45% of total global military spending, but Obama's $30 billion dollar surge on its own would put the United States in the top ten countries for military funding.

If you received a silver dollar every second, it would take 960 years before you reached $30 billion. Together, the coins would weigh nearly 120,000 tons, or more than the poundage of 21,000 Asian elephants, an aircraft carrier, or the Washington Monument.

Converted to dollar bills and laid end-to-end, $30 billion would reach 2.9 million miles or 120 times around the Earth.

Total US spending on the Afghanistan War for 2010 is expected to exceed $102.9 billion, which is $12 million per hour.

The US cost of war in Afghanistan in 2010 will be nearly five times that country's gross domestic product or $3,623.70 for every Afghan woman, man, and child.

$30 billion could easily build, furnish, and equip enough schools for the whole of Afghanistan.

By 2010, total US Afghanistan War spending since November 2001 will exceed $325 billion, which equals the combined annual military spending of Great Britain, China, France, Japan, Germany, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

If the US had not invaded Afghanistan, the cost of war evenly distributed in America could have given $2,298.80 to every US taxpayer.

Meanwhile in Copenhagen...

The Copenhagen Accord at the end of the internation conference on climate change was heralded by Obama as "meaningful and unprecedented".

"We agreed to join an international effort to provide financing to help developing countries, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable, adapt to climate change."

It included, he said, a $30 billion offer by 2012 to help poorer countries with climate change measures.

What Obama didn't say is that the $30 billion aid for poorer countries by 2012 was mostly existing offers from Japan and the EU which the US will top up with… wait for it… just $3.6 billion over two years.

So to help save the planet from devastation, Obama commits little more than 10 percent of the cost of sending 30,000 more troops to escalate a war that is devastating a country.

Meanwhile in Israel...

While we're talking about $30 billion, this is the amount of military aid to Israel that Obama has approved for the next ten years.

That's $3 billion a year to help fund the illegal and expanding colonisation of Palestinian land.

Which is one billion a year more than the US contribution to help poor countries counter climate change up to 2012.

Meanwhile Gordon Brown...

Gordon Brown has committed £1.5 billion to the $30 billion fund to help poorer countries protect themselves against climate change. Which just happens to be the same amount that he's spent on updating helicopters for service in the unwinnable Afghanistan war.