For the price of the Iraq War, we could've bought every Somali enough cement to make seven Ryozen Kannon memorial statues.
A ship carrying cement was recently captured by pirates off the coast of Somalia, which has a population of 10 million. Kyoto's Ryozen Kannon memorial, constructed in honor of the World War II dead from both sides, includes a large Bodhisattva statue made of 500 tons of cement, so it would take 35 billion tons of cement to build seven statues for each Somali. A metric ton of cement costs $77 when bought in bulk. So buying enough cement to make seven Ryozen Kannon statues for each Somali would cost $2.70 trillion, which is less than Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' estimate of $3 trillion for the total cost of the Iraq War.
