America by the Numbers

America and Some Great Numbers

By Colman McCarthy

--In 2002, Congress gave $334 billion to the Department of Defense, which is about $900 million a day, or $11,000 per second, or more than $2,000 from each taxpayer.

--$900 million a day is four times greater than the Peace Corps budget for a year.

--The U.S. military budget is 23 times larger than the combined military budgets of the seven nations alleged to be threats to America.

--Every day that U.S. military programs are given $900 million, some 40,000 children, according to Oxfam, die from hunger-related or preventable diseases.

--Officials at the Department of Defense said in February 2002 that the $48 billion increase in military spending proposed by President Bush for 2003 is not enough.

--An estimated 5,000 cluster bombs dropped by U.S. pilots on Afghanistan in the Fall of 200l remain unexploded.

--The list of countries that U.S. military forces have bombed since 1945, according to historian William Blum, include China (1945), Korea (1950-53), China (1950-53), Guatemala (1954), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), Guatemala (1960), Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-1970), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Guatemala (1967-69), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua ((1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-2002), Sudan (1998), Afghanistan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001-200). No democratic government, respectful of human rights occurred as a direct result.

--On average, 40,000 people a month die in the world’s 59 wars or conflicts. According to the Center for Defense Information, 80 percent of them are fought with U.S. made weapons. American companies are the world leading seller of ammunition, for an arsenal of more than 500 million small arms and light weapons.

--2.4 million Pop-Tarts were dropped on Afghanistan in the first month of U.S. bombing in late 2001.

--In 10 years of U.S. supported economic sanctions, at least 500,000 Iraqis have died, according to UNICEF.

-- Food banks and homeless shelters in major American cities report as much as 25 percent increases in calls for help from poor people.

--On February 5, 2002, the day that military increases were called for in the new federal budget, four homeless people froze to death on streets within miles of the U.S. Capitol.

--The closest school to the White House is five blocks away. It is one of the poorest in America. The building, constructed during the Grant administration, has no cafeteria, no auditorium, no gym and no lockers.

--Americans spend $22 billion annually on their pets.

--In 2000, the fuel economy of the average new car fell to its lowest point in 20 years.

--More than 700 people on the nation’s death rows have been either gassed, shot, drugged, hung or electrocuted to death since 1977.

--Thirteen retarded people have been executed.

--Ninety nine death row prisoners have been freed by exonerating evidence.

--America imprisons more people than any country in the world.

--At $4.6 billion, the federal prison system is the largest single piece of the Department of Justice budget.

--The leading cause of injury among American women is being beaten at home, by husbands, boy friends, ex-husbands or ex-boy friends.

--One in five adolescent girls endures physical or sexual violence at the hands of a dating partner.

--To supply meat, U.S. companies kill an estimated 12 million animals a day.

Thirty-five years have passed since Martin Luther King, Jr., said: “I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values….We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.”

Colman McCarthy, a former Washington Post columnist, directs the Center for Teaching Peace, Washington DC. He is the author of six books on social justice, including “I’d Rather Teach Peace Peace” (Orbis Books, 2002). He teaches courses on nonviolence at

Georgetown University Law Center, the University of Maryland, American University, Catholic University and three public high schools. Five thousand students have taken his courses since 1982,

Feb. 8, 2002

Mr. Hugh Downs

7993 N. Ridgeview Dr.

Paradise Valley AZ 85253

Dear Hugh Downs:

Sure, I’m delighted to be included in “My America, What My Country Means to Me.” Largest of thanks for asking. Enclosed is my statement on how I view America.

The honorarium can be given to the Center for Teaching Peace, address below.

I remember the fine commencement speech you gave at the University of Maryland in the late 1980s. One of my students, Sarah Linde, also spoke. She went on to become a public health physician.

Kind regards,

Colman McCarthy