Investing in Iraqi freedom

byHabib Battah
Mar 26, 2013

According to figures published by EuroNews, the US government has spent $1.7 trillion on its war in Iraq and just $8 million on rebuilding the country’s universities.

I did a little math and this means the amount the US has invested in the future of Iraq–its college students– is less than 0.001 percent of the amount it has invested in occupying and destroying the country.

There’s a lot of yearning for American involvement here in Lebanon that I’ve heard from friends and co-workers over the years. I hope some of those Lebanese friends will take these figures into consideration in their estimation that US governments seek improvement of their lives.

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 15 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.