Horrendous Cost For Australia Of US War On Terror
By Dr Gideon Polya
14 October, 2012
Countercurrents.org
The World has just witnessed the 11th anniversary of the war criminal US invasion of Afghanistan (7 October 2001). The US War on Terror has had a disastrous impact not just on Iraq , Afghanistan , Somalia , Libya and other Muslim countries but also upon the US itself and on Australia , one of America 's most slavish allies. The War on Terror was precipitated by the 9-11 atrocity that in the view of many science, engineering, architecture, aviation, military and intelligence experts must have involved the American Government itself (with some asserting Israeli involvement ) (see “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ ). The horrendous US War on Terror (11 million Muslims killed) was enabled by massive Mainstream lying - indeed the horrendous dimensions of the cost to Americans, Australians and other US allies, as well as to Muslims, has been resolutely ignored by Mainstream media, politicians and academics. In Australia this lying has been perpetrated by the successive Liberal National Party Coalition and Labor Governments (aka the Lib-Labs, the Liberal-Laborals).
Conservative Australian economics writer Ross Gittins estimated the domestic cost of the War on Terror "since 2001 to well over $US1 trillion [for the US ]. Those figures don't include the cost to US taxpayers of the terrorism-related wars in Iraq and Afghanistan . The equivalent figure for Australia (which does include the cost of the wars) is about $30 billion" (see "A vast cost in feeling just a little more secure", Sydney Morning Herald, 14 September 2012: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/a-vast-cost-in-feeling-just-a-little-more-secure-20110913-1k7l1.html ).
The accrual cost to America of the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War has been estimated at $3.5 trillion and $1-2 trillion, respectively i.e. as high as $5.5 trillion. This has been associated with deaths from violence or from violently-imposed deprivation totalling 2.7 million (Iraq, 2003-2011) and 5.6 million (Afghanistan, 2001-2012) (not to mention 1.1 million deaths in Somalia this century) (see "Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide": https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ ); 6,600 US combat deaths; 50,000 US veteran suicides; 230,000 American drug-related deaths from US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world market share in 2001 to 92% in 2007; and the preventable deaths of about 12 million Americans since 2001 (1.1 million per year) due to the fiscal perversion of killing millions of Muslims abroad rather than saving the lives of millions of Americans at home (see “ 1 million Americans die preventably each year under racist Neocon & Zionist rule”, Bellaciao, 18 February 212: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article21696 ).
Decent, ordinary American 99 Percenters won't thank cowardly, racist, Zionist-perverted , US lackey, Australians for their role in this carnage under successive Liberal National Party Coalition and Labor Governments (aka the Lib-Labs, Liberal-Laborals). The Australian Greens have been essentially alone in opposing this continuing atrocity.
In addition to the $30 billion for the Domestic War on Terror (2001-2011; Ross Gittins, see above), Australia has spent about $2 billion annually or $22 billion in total on participation in 21st century US wars (this excluding the accrual cost due to debt servicing and the long term cost of caring for severely injured soldiers and the likely majority of Australian veterans who have been traumatized). The US ratio of accrual cost/budget cost of the Iraq-Afghan Wars is $5.5 trillion/$1.3 trillion = 4.2, and applying this to Australia suggests an accrual cost of Australian participation at 4.2 x $22 billion = $92 billion. If we include a further $33 billion for the domestic cost of the War on Terror (2001-2012) , then the cost to Australia of the Zionist- and corporate-promoted War on Terror is $92 billion + $33 billion = $125 billion. That represents $125 billion that could have been spent on health and on saving the lives of sick Australians.
66,000 Australians die preventably each year (see "Why PM Julia Gillard Must Go: 66,000 Preventable Australian Deaths Annually", Countercurrents: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya210212.htm ) and thus 11 x 66,000 = 726,000 Australians have died preventably since 2001, 4,000 of whom died opiate drug-related deaths due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry (see “Afghan Holocaust Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ ) and 99,000 of whom were Indigenous Australians dying avoidable deaths due to an annual funding of Aboriginal health of circa $1.7 billion that is 2-3-fold too low. The policies of the lying, traitorous, US lackey, pro-Zionist, Lib-Lab warmongers have helped kill 726,000 Australians over the last 11 years. The $125 billion wasted on war and terror hysteria could have been spent on the 726,000 Australians who have died preventably in the last 11 years, an enormous sum of $125,000 million/0.726 million people = $172,000 per person.
If we assume that such expenditure would have saved the lives of roughly half these people - i.e. 360,000 Australians – then at the Value of a Statistical Life (VOSL) of $7.6 million per person, this actuarial, risk avoidance-based cost would have been $7.6 million per person x 0.36 million persons = $2.7 trillion, equivalent to Australia's Gross Domestic Product for 2 years.
However the damage to Australia doesn't stop there. As revealed by ABC radio National "Saturday Extra" (see 13 October 2012, Saturday Extra re “Why Defence Bill threatens Australian research and innovation” : http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/why-defence-bill-threatens-australian-research-and-innovation/4309824 ), according to Universities Australia (UA; representing 39 Australian universities) the US- (and no doubt its Apartheid Israeli surrogate-) inspired "Defence Trade Controls Bill 2011)" "creates considerable uncertainty for universities about their ability to engage in these teaching and research activities lawfully...". This Bill has already passed the House of Representatives and only needs approval of the overwhelmingly Lib-Lab-dominated Senate. This outrageous Bill will (according to UA) make it an offence (up to 10 years in prison) for a university (and hence any citizen) to supply information, assistance or training to non-Australians in relation to goods listed on the Defence and Strategic Goods List (DGSL) that comprises 353 pages, listing thousands of goods. T he US- and Zionist-beholden, US lackey Lib-Labs (Liberal-Laborals) in this one move are wrecking Australian universities, especially in relation to educating over 240,000 overseas students annually in an "education export industry" worth $16 billion annually. Such students simply won't spend big money to be lied to by Government-intimidated and censored academics.
The most “dangerous goods” one supposes relate to IT and electronics (goodbye to world-leading computer research in Australia ), microbiology (goodbye to medical, biotechnology and microbiological research in Australia ) and to potentially toxic synthetic and naturally occurring chemicals and their precursors (goodbye to chemical, pharmaceutical and pharmacological research in Australia ). This is national scientific and intellectual suicide - indeed a massive attack on the science-based security of Australians by scientifically-illiterate politicians. It is conceivable that the list of many books to be banned would include my own huge 860 page pharmacological text "The Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds. A pharmacological reference guide to sites of action and biological effects" (published by Taylor & Francis & CRC Press, in London and New York in 2003) that deals with tens of thousands of naturally occurring and synthetic toxic compounds. This transcends book-burning fascism – this is a massive attack on the science-based security of Australians by scientifically-illiterate, US-beholden, Lib-Lab politicians (see Universities Australia response to the Defence Trade Controls Bill: http://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/page/submissions---reports/reviews-and-inquiries/defence-trade-controls-bill/ ).
Australians have a compulsory preferential voting system and are obliged to punish the US lackey Labor Government at the ballot box for its sustained betrayal of Australia and humanity. Decent Australians will vote 1 Green and put Labor last until Labor gives up its despicable, pro-war neoliberalism and reverts to decent humane values (the conservative Liberal Party-National Party Coalition is even worse than Labor but has not actually betrayed decent Labor voters). The US state terrorism, genocidal racism and endless warmongering of the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) One Percenters are a huge threat not just to the Muslim World but to all humanity, the biosphere and to Americans and Australians. Australia should have nothing to do with these evil psychopaths. The racist Zionists, the US NAZI One Percenters and their global supporters should all be sidelined from public life as have been like racist psychopaths such as the Nazis, neo-Nazis, Apartheiders and KKK.
Australia has an appalling secret genocide history (see: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/australia-s-secret-genocide-history ) including its participation in all post-1950 US Asian Wars (38 million deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation; see my book "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950", now available for free perusal on the Web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/ ). Asia is Australia's neighborhood and it would great sense for Australians to simply stop killing Asians for the genocidal US 1% and to adopt the policies of Yankee go home, no bases for child-killing US Marines in Darwin, no nuclear weapons in Australia, and no bases in Australia for child-killing American military in general. Of course the horrendous cost to Australia of the Zionist-backed US War on Terror may well reflect a similar huge impact on YOUR country too.
Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has recently published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007): http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .
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