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The Cost of US Security
Hugh Pickens writes "The Atlantic reports that as we mark Osama bin Laden's death, what's striking is how much he cost our nation and how little we've gained from our fight against him. By conservative estimates, bin Laden cost the US at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years, counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy, the wars and heightened security triggered by the terrorist attacks he engineered, and the direct efforts to hunt him down. 'What do we have to show for that tab,' ask Tim Fernholz and Jim Tankersley. 'Two wars that continue to occupy 150,000 troops and tie up a quarter of our defense budget; a bloated homeland-security apparatus that has at times pushed the bounds of civil liberty; soaring oil prices partially attributable to the global war on bin Laden's terrorist network; and a chunk of our mounting national debt.' In 2004 bin Laden explicitly compared the US fight to the Afghan incursion that helped bankrupt the Soviet Union during the Cold War. 'We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy,' said bin Laden, adding that that every dollar spent by al-Qaida in attacking the US has cost Washington $1m in economic fallout and military spending."
when terrorism makes us become something we are not then terrorism has won - we are less free and less wealthy
But we'll spend trillions of dollars and radically change our society to 'deal' with them.
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he'd be pretty dumb if he did. Seriously. The wars have mostly been a money grab for Halliburton and co, which suits the American Corporate ruling class just fine. Hell, fear of terrorists has set back the labor movement in the US 100 years, again, good for the sort of folk that have been in favor of meddling in the Middle East for years. Plus the wars are helping to keep these people in power. 9/11 was the best thing that could happen to global corporations. People stopped asking why their wages are falling and started cringing in fear of all them tarrafyin' tarrarists.
And of course, who could for get the Best. Chart. Ever. Thanks Bush. It's amazing how much damage one administration can do in such a short time when you let 'em do whatever the heck they want...
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at what cost? Now we all live in fear. For our jobs. For our privacy, and of each other.
"On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle." -Linus Torvalds
Does anyone else see this as being very similar to how the USA beat the USSR?
We forced the USSR to spend themselves out of existence. The terrorists are now playing our own game, except against us. Unfortunately, I fear how this will end for the USA if we don't figure out that we can't win this game without changing the rules.
Ignore the terrorist. When the Russian airport was bombed some months back, people walked over the rubble and got on their connecting flights the same goddam day. Ignore them. And ignore the media, your friends and family, the government, the talk-show host, your teachers, and any other fool who says we need to fear. ignore the stupidity, but DONT GIVE UP. Attempt to have rational conversations. Get don't be polarizing. Be polite. Be honest. Use facts. Check them. If your wrong, admit. Do things the scientific way. Do things morally. Do things honestly.
We all die someday, its terrible. I am related to people who have been physically been harmed by extremist. And you know what. FUCK THE EXTREMIST. Who gives a shit! Its time our society collectively grabs its balls, puts in work, fires to dumbfucking politicians, and accepts collateral damage at being a successful capitalistic country. Yes there exist corporate corruption in the pockets of government. Yes we get screwed by this and that. But fight for what you believe in and research the facts and fuck all the bullshit. Next time you go out, have a conversation with somebody. Mention to them the falling intelligence levels of the country, the deficit spending, the ridiculous wars, the stupid bigotry. Make people see how ignorant and irrational the country as a whole is acting. If enough people talk about it, it will become the subconscious mind-set of the whole. Anything is better than this Lifetime movie induced coma culture suckling away at the 5'o'clock news and twitter and Facebook.
Last time I was at the DMV, an older gentlemen casually said to me "worlds' fallin to shit, ain't", I said yeah and this and that, and he said "so what is your generation doing about it?"
We don't need some stupid violent revolution or anything like that, but an evolution in the way we think about the sustainable of our race. If we are doomed to be Matrix like beings stuck in vats for our protection while some masters sit in a panoptican keeping everybody's nutrients levels up and fear levels low, well, lets go ahead and start that private space industry funding to Titan's moons.
As I say this I just finished a letter to my representative Jamie Boles (NC) regarding him balking at people having legally permitted concealed weapons in restaurants, and his stalling tactics in regards to HB1XX. Take a stand on what you feel is right, and let these fuckers know your watching them. We just have to stop talking amongst ourselves and start reaching out to others who aren't in our little mental circle jerk in all these forums.
For the TLDR crowd: longwinded guy says some political shit, herp derp nub aids
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
All he wanted was to cripple us. And where he failed, we did it to ourselves. So ultimately, he won. When a suicide bomber walks into a populated area he knows he is going to die - he just hopes that he can take out at as many people as possible in the process.
Lets put these numbers into perspective:
Osama Bin Laden's estimated damage: $3 trillion
Bill Gates net worth: $56 billion
Apple's market capitalization: $308 billion
2010 stimulus bill: $787 billion
So Bin laden and the resulting spiral of stupidity did more economic damage to the US than Bill Gates + Apple + the economic stimulus put together. From Bin Laden's perspective, our loss is his gain. That means he died the wealthiest most powerful human being on the planet. All because he fooled America into it's own economic death spiral. History will look back on this time as a time when America nearly destroyed itself.
This is like one flea taking down the entire dog because it scratched itself to death.
If anything, Hugh Pickens' summary paints too rosy a picture.
The title, "The Cost of US Security," has the words "cost" and "security" in it.
"Security" implies that the US's four wars since 2001 (I count Pakistan as a war) have some positive correlation with US Security. If anything, they have decreased US security. The second Iraq war happened because Bush got Powell to go to the UN and tell them lies about how Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were a security threat. The Pakistan war involves our giving the Pakistani government lots of money so they can work hand in glove with terrorists. What exactly has the Afghanistan war accomplished, other than killing lots of young Americans and putting a corrupt Afghan government in power and allowing it to fake elections?
The word "cost," along with all the dollar figures, encourages us to measure the outcome in terms of money. The outcome should be measured in terms of the destruction of domestic civil liberties, crapping on the constitution, torturing people who didn't do anything wrong, crippling and killing teenage Americans, and killing innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
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Yes, you can blame the WTC and Clinton's cruise missile attacks and to some extent even the Afghanistan* War on bin Laden, but the article also blames him for the costs of Bush's Iraq War, which had nothing to do with him and which cost a lot more than Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein was the kind of corrupt secular dictator bin Laden hated, and American troops based in the Holy Land (that's Saudi Arabia, in this case) were one of the things bin Laden got most upset about.
Bush may have used bin Laden as an excuse, along with "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and "Saddam tried to kill my daddy after my daddy tried to kill Saddam", but the Pentagon was planning the Iraq War from the first week Bush got into office. (See Bamford's book "A Pretext for War" for more details - Cheney, Condi Rice, Rumsfeld, and Cheney's neo-con buddies were all at those early planning meetings. And Iraq was a logical target since Bush 41's war had never really been finished, so the Pentagon should have been doing at least some planning in case the politicians wanted to finish the war.)
* And even the Afghanistan War was mostly an attempt to impose a non-Taliban winner onto the civil war that the Taliban had mostly won, and while they were permitting bin Laden to operate in their country, bombing the place in response to 9/11 was a bit like the Brits bombing the Irish parts of Boston and San Francisco after an IRA bombing in London.
Bill Stewart
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Iraq had nothing to do with Osama.
That's not a contrarian opinion. It's nothing but a collection of the usual bile.
"vile dictator named Saddam Hussein"
You do remember that we CREATED him? We (the US) put him in power and provided the weapons he used to fight against Iran, against his own people and eventually against us.
I'm all for deficit reduction,et al.. But I really wonder when these self-declared "conservatives" will wake up and realize that all the preaching in the world isn't going to change anything. You can rail against "entitlement" programs and bureaucracies until you're blue in the face, but I guarantee you wouldn't want to live without them. Might I point out that the money we spent on Iraq is enough to permanently fix social security?
I assume you're not old enough for Social Security, but I bet your parents are and claimed it. Since you're using your computer and posting to a website, you've benefited from the FCC and the DoEnergy. If you drove on any US highway or ridden on an airplane, you've benefited from the DOT. I assume you were educated in the US,probably attended college and probably used at least some amount of student loans to pay for it. You can thank the DoEducation for that.
If you really want to change something, why don't you take the time to actually learn what all of these agencies do. Instead of being spoon fed by Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin, take the time to do the research. Then, you can make some intelligent arguments about how to improve the system. For all the rhetoric, the "conservative" movement is nothing more then the same old crap in a different wrapper. Reagan raided SS and filled it with bonds to finance his deficit spending. The Bush's both wanted to raid it entirely and give it to their wall-street buddies in the form of "private accounts." The only people that would have benefited from that are the investment bankers. I think we've given them enough handouts already.
So, back to my original point: Unless you have a better proposal that's well thought-out and actually implementable, you have no standing.
If all you can say is that we should do away with all of it, you've only demonstrated your own ignorance.
Because we must follow the rules of war, our costs/losses are going to be exponentially higher.
I don't recall those rules stating that you must go to war.
Many countries go through worse and choose not to go to war.
Perhaps Bin Laden didn't cost the US trillions. Perhaps the ego and vanity of a nation did.
Beetle B.
For Al Queda, the US reverting to Christian fundamentalism is a good thing, because the power structure of Christian fundamentalism is similar to fundamentalist Islam, and so it is easier to take over from within. It is exactly the same mechanism by which German communists were among the most likely to become fanatical Nazis - people who are already fanatics are ripe for conversion to a different brand of fanaticism.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."