$10 billion a month… to bin Laden’s buddies?

“While I was looking at these destroyed towers [by a US-aided Israeli bombardment] in Lebanon, it sparked in my mind that the tyrant should be punished with the same and that we should destroy towers in America, so that it tastes what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women.  …  If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we don’t attack Sweden, for example.  It is known that those who hate freedom do not have dignified souls.”  (BBC, “Exerpts: Bin Laden Video,” October 29, 2003, as quoted in Jesus for President, 280.)

One of the ideas Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw emphasize in their book Jesus for President is the fact that when you respond to violence and hate with an illogical demonstration with love, you throw your enemy off.  It’s hard to predict what exactly will happen next–but rest assured, it’s unlikely to be the same as if we were both playing the retaliation game.  Given our inexperience with such nontraditional methods, it might be worth testing out.

So what are the craziest almost-not-but-maybe-barely-feasible ideas you can come up with to surprise bin Laden with radical love toward the Islamic world?  (Right now we’re supposedly spending about $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan…)

Here’s a mere half year in of possibilities:

$10 billion in January: Providing 90.9% of the aid needed annually to achieve universal primary education by 2015 earns an A.

$10 billion in February: Giving $500 to 20 million entrepreneurs lacking access to credit.  (I messed up my math on this one, so at first I thought this would be helping out 10-20% of the 1 to 1.9 billion Muslims in the world… but if we made it $100 each, I guess we could help 5-10% of the poorest people?)

$10 billion in March: Provide 100% of the funds needed annually to have clean water and sanitation for everyone in the world by 2015.

$10 billion in April: Or if you’re someone that likes the idea of money going directly into people’s pockets rather than the government, we could always give an additional $313.58 to the 31,889,923 residents of Afghanistan this year.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it would nearly double the per capita GDP (from $350, or $733 PPP).

$10 billion in May: We could also give $5-10 to each of the 1-1.9 billion Muslims in the world.  Hmm… maybe we could buy them each a T-shirt or cake or pretty tea cup (tea is popular in Northern Africa, I know– I’m not sure where else).  Or among a small collection of goodies we could send them each an olive branch or a dove or something…  hmm…

$10 billion in June: To get an inside view of Islamic countries throughout the world, we could spend $45,000 (well over a necessary salary, travel expenses, etc.) to send 222,222 representatives to various locales to hang out and get to know Iraqi, Afghan, etc. people as people.  Alternately, we could always fund programs like, oh, say, maybe study abroad for college students?

What other ideas can you come up with?  How do you think bin Laden would react?