The cost of forestalling terrorism
2/29/08 A couple of days ago I was listening to a government spokesman say once again that because the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, no Terrorist Act Has Been Carried out in the United States or against US Installations anywhere in the world since. (Not counting attacks against all American installations, fixed and mobile, in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course).
Starting here: 3,000 people killed in the US 9/11/2001, mostly by Saudi Arabians trained in Afghanistan.
Since the US invaded Iraq for no particular reason in 2003, almost 4,000 American soldiers died there, 30,000 American soldiers were wounded there, 400+ contractors died there, 150 journalists (mostly locals) were killed there, and there are almost 90,000 documented Iraqi civilian deaths (but as General Tommy Franks said, we don’t do body counts).
The dollar cost looks to be over 3,000,000,000,000 dollars so far (borrowed money).
Leaving aside the question of whether the Iraq invasion kept terrorist acts from being carried out etc., is 4,000++ American lives and 3 trillion dollars a reasonable price to pay to forestall some imagined terrorist act?
March 5, 2008 at 6:41 pm
What if we would have used half of that money, say 1,500,000,000,000 to provide hospitals and schools for the disenfranchised peoples. Place a big sign on the building saying it is a gift from the people of America. How might that have worked to forestall some imagined terrorist act?
March 6, 2008 at 3:03 am
All those zeros make me dizzy.
Anyhow, I guess we’ll never know.
March 6, 2008 at 3:23 am
How much healthcare would that have gotten us?
From what I know, it’s built and rebuilt all kinds of roads and schools and hospitals over in Iraq.
Meanwhile, that pothole in the alley is about ready to consume my car. No joking, Ed - don’t go driving the mini-Cooper back there…unless you have full coverage, a cell phone and a parachute.
March 6, 2008 at 4:14 pm
2 out of 3 ain’t bad.
If only I knew where that alley was, maybe I could try getting it fixed.
If I could insert an image, you’d see a little green man and a huge pothole lake.