Getting Clean Water To Zimbabwe Makes Good Cents.

Having taken my pro-violence, pro-monogamy arguments off the blog and onto the email, I came across my own constant argument: America's foreign war chest should be only as large as America's foreign aid chest.

As I write this, hundreds of people in Zimbabwe have died from cholera. More than 12,000 more have become infected. Clean water has become such a problem in that country that people are literally digging holes near latrines to gather water. Cholera causes severe diarrhea and vomiting, and death is usually due to dehydration. Simple drugs will cure cholera.

Unfortunately, clean water and medical supplies are in such short supply that doctors are literally refusing to treat patients, for fear of touching them and contracting cholera themselves (for which they couldn't get treatment either).

Each month, the U.S. spends around $12 billion to maintain the military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am not asking to decrease this amount (well, not in this post anyway), rather I am asking the United States recognize that protecting human life is not just a military matter.

A news article today reports a company has developed a $1,200 device that pulls the humidity out of the air and supplies it as pure drinking water. If the U.S. spent 1 month of war money on these devices, it could purchase 10 million of them. Each device can produce up to 13 liters of purified water a day. If the average person could get by on 2-3 liters of drinking water a day, you can easily imagine creating enough drinking water for 40 million people a day (Zimbabwe's population currently stands at only 13 million) and that is a renewable process. Of course, if you used industrial equipment you could produce far more than that. With $12 billion you could build a nuclear powerplant ($3-4 billion) a desalinization plant on the South African coast ($145 million) and a guarded pipeline from the coast into central Zimbabwe with supply stations along the way ($224 million). Since this would take a minimum of 7 years to build, you could use the remaining $7 billion to provide drugs and medical supplies for the entire Zimbabwe population ($168 million), build a sewer system for every large city and town ($930 million), and still have enough money to build good roads and schools all over the country.

And all that was done with the money spent in a single month in Iraq. How many lives have been saved because America (and friends) invaded Iraq and Afghanistan? The number is impossible to calculate. But it is easy to calculate that with less than $2 billion over 12,000 people could have been spared Cholera in Zimbabwe.

Humanitarianism is really unattractive politically, and detractors always point to the volatile governments and corruption in countries where humanitarian aid is needed. But if the American military presence rolled into Zimbabwe to protect the humanitarian workers, would there really be much resistance? We took over Iraq in like, 12 days, we can do what we want! And in this case what we should want is to help starving, sick people who have no hope other than us.


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