By MAX ASHBURN
Observer Staff

The question has often been asked: “What would you do if you won the lottery?”

It’s a question that sets the mind adrift for a few moments as we ponder the possibilities: travel the world, spend our days on the beach sipping margaritas or maybe buy the house or car of our dreams. But then we’ll rattle off a handful of more practical uses: pay off our debts, take care of our loved ones or make a large donation to our favorite charity.

There have been a lot of numbers tossed around in the media lately about the total cost of the Iraq war to American taxpayers. One number floating around this week was $1.3 trillion, which includes both concrete and hidden, ancillary costs of the war.

It’s important to recognize that, first and foremost, the biggest cost of the war has been what it has cost in human lives. Thousands of Americans and tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives either directly or indirectly as a result of the war. These are costs on which we can’t put a price.

Still, the cost of the war in dollars and cents is nearly as tragic. Each of those amounts represents a lost opportunity to make a positive impact here at home.

An enigma wrapped in Ben Franklins

The way the books are balanced for the Iraq war would be incomprehensible to the person who walks an extra two blocks to get to the ATM that won’t charge him or her a fee. Which, I suspect, is most of us.

Bills submitted to the U.S. Department of Defense are rounded off to the nearest thousand dollars. Sacks of cash worth tens of millions of dollars are sent to Iraq and are never seen again. The Pentagon hands out blank checks to groups like Blackwater and other private contractors.

Most estimates I’ve read have put the cost of the war to U.S. taxpayers at upwards of $300 million a day. Millions become billions, and soon the figure takes on an almost comical air.

In a sense, for the average person, the war debt is not unlike calculus or metaphysics – we know it exists, but it’s a concept so difficult to grasp that we don’t trouble ourselves with thinking about it more than necessary. And I’m sure that’s A-OK with the folks who are incurring the war debt.

What $1.3 trillion buys these days

Let’s try to think about it for a few moments. What do we know about the war debt?

We know that it’s a very, very large amount of money. We know that it’s money being provided, now or in the future, by tax-paying citizens of the United States.

So, let’s allow ourselves to imagine what else we could do with all the money we’re spending in Iraq.

The big ideas that come to mind right away for most people are things like medical research, investments in education, shoring up social security, cleaning up the environment and pursuing alternative and renewable energy resources.

All fine and noble ideas, indeed. But indulge me for a moment, and let me imagine a few unorthodox but equally noble ideas for what we could do with a trillion or so dollars:

* We could buy Wal-Mart and turn every one of its stores into avant-garde art galleries to make up for the scars of low-priced blandness they’ve put on this country.

* We could lure Rush Limbaugh into a cave with enough prescription narcotics to kill a bear. Once inside the cave, Limbaugh would, of course, be eaten by a bear.

* We could find a way to slow down the Earth’s rotation so that there would be, in fact, more hours in a day, and you could finally get eight hours of sleep.

* We could convince the original Guns n’ Roses lineup to set aside their differences and go on one more booze and heroin-fueled tour for all of us too young to have caught them at the Roxy in ’87.

* We could build a telescope powerful enough to see back to the beginning of time and determine the origin of the universe.

* We could finally get “The Wonder Years” released on DVD.

* iPhones for everyone!

* We could go to Vegas and bet the whole thing on Red 27.

* Every child’s fifth birthday present: a year’s worth of bassoon lessons.

* We could all afford box seats at Fenway – natch!

I guess I’ll stop daydreaming and get back to work now. I hear we’re attacking Iran soon, and someone’s going to have to pay for the Grand Ayatollah’s dry cleaning!