Our missile strike in Syria could have fed ~25,000 hungry children for a year.
~59 missiles @ 1mil each
$200/mo for food
= 24583 children could have food reliably for an entire year.
War is the biggest waste of our wealth we have.
@blurredweasel or we can kill all the hungry people and save billions!
@blurredweasel The missiles were already bought and don't cost less to sit in the launch tubes. And there is the question of whether paying for food for the poor stops rogue states using chemical weapons on civilians. It is difficult, really, to do a prove comparison for such different things.
@rochelimit I'm not against all military. That's a fantasy utopia, but the Trump admin has whipsawed their policies back & forth, presented no coherent plan, didn't consult any other rest of the world (appropriate when "punishing" an international law violation for WMD), and then Tillerson came out with "You should not in any way extrapolate that [the strikes] changed our policy or posture on Syria in any way."
So what are we doing? Is there a plan? What are we achieving?
@blurredweasel Oh, Trump has no plan whatsoever, and that scares me a lot. I am sure he just saw the TV news and flip flopped as usual. The man has no plan, no ideals beyond making money, no military understanding beyond lashing out at Syria. I don't disagree with the missiles as such yet, but a plan would be nice. Well, essential.
@blurredweasel sure, if you ignore the massive logistical problems and overhead associated with distributing food directly to 25,000 people
@Jpot Yeah, we have existing programs related to feeding hungry children, both directly government (WIC, who's budget is limited), and well established charities all over the country (Food Banks).
Also, it's a 300 character toot, not a detailed policy plan. But every time we make a military expenditure, we're taking money from real hungry children, real homeless. Big numbers seem so abstract so I'm showing what else could have been done w/ this amount of money.
@blurredweasel Sure, I get the intention, I just feel like it's a bit of a disingenuous oversimplification when you say "x number of children could have had food if we hadn't launched these particular missiles."
@blurredweasel I guess what I'm trying to say is that poverty is an incredibly complex problem with much bigger roadblocks than simple allocation of funds.
@blurredweasel "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" - President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Republicans used to be different.