If we can spend $1 trillion on the Iraq war, then we can afford $1 trillion for a new American Dream.

• • •

We cannot call for The Next Trillion without considering the reconstruction of Iraq. We must deal forthrightly with this responsibility.

The United States annual military budget of more than $439 billion – not counting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – is equal to almost half the military budgets of all the nations on the entire globe, and more than equal to the military expenditures of the next six countries combined, including China.

Our military spending must include the costs of cleaning up after ourselves. Just as we want companies to take into account the so-called “externalities” that are created when they seek to maximize shareholder wealth and economic growth, we must see to it that the military internalizes the costs of this “collateral damage.” We must include in our military budgets the costs of rebuilding Iraq.

At the same time, we need to address the systemic problems that created the conditions for such conflict. We need to begin to reconstruct not only Iraq but the world in which financial markets, capital flows, technological innovation, consumer appetites and environmental impacts are accelerating beyond our ability to manage them, destabilizing societies and straining natural systems to the limit.

And if a trillion dollars still seems like a lot, then view it in the context of the $2 trillion dollars a day that speeds through Wall Street. Many observers have pointed out that the war in Iraq has been, in terms of a percentage of the overall US economy, one of the least expensive wars in our history. A trillion dollars deployed over a five-year period represents between 1 and 2 percent of our gross domestic product.

If we can afford to spend a trillion dollars on an Iraq nightmare, then we can afford a trillion dollars for a new American Dream.