Yeah, that’s almost a rounding error. It’s a tiny amount against the larger GDP.
Only problem is that we borrowed the trillion bucks and don’t have the discipline to tax a greater percentage of that 189 trillion in order to pay it back before racking up several times the amount we borrowed in interest payments.
Deficiencies in fiscal policy are not a compelling argument for not mobilizing security forces (whether police or military) against terrorist threats.
No, but ok, so the terrorists blew up a building, worth a couple billion, and killed 3000 people. You could reasonably argue that the people killed were “worth more” to society than regular people because they worked in a fancy office building and many of them were involved in the finance building. (then again, you could also argue rather convincingly that these were the people society could most easily spare)
In any case, I’ve read that the average person is worth about 10 million bucks to themselves, about 3 mil to society as far as the FAA is concerned. Let’s say the 9/11 victims were worth 20 million.
So the total loss to society was 62 billion dollars. Interesting that the people in that building are worth far more than the building. Anyways, it seems unreasonable to me to waste 3 trillion to possibly prevent another 62 billion loss. Spending another 30-60 billion (that’s enough money to retrofit the airliners with better cockpit doors and punish the terrorist hosting country with some heavy bombing runs). Sensible. But not 3000 billion.
“but you can’t value human lives in dollars”. Of course you can. Or we as a society would make very different decisions. And 20 million a head is a quite generous valuation.
I reject that the morality of self-defense has anything to do with cost.
If I am threatened by a maniac on the street, my decision on whether or not to defend myself should not be based on whether it will cost less to fight him or to submit to him. Similarly, if one transports themselves back to September 12th, one cannot foresee whether invading Afghanistan – a totally reasonable and justifiable policy on its merits – would be more or less expensive than capitulation.
So your analysis of self-defense versus cost is a totally useless one, because it does not inform us at all as to what should be done in future situations.
So if somebody from Nigeria shoots one security guard at the white house, we should spend a billion dollars bombing Nigeria.
Of course cost matters.
Apples and oranges. One guy who happens to be Nigerian doesn’t necessarily represent a new set of threats from Nigeria.
And I don’t believe that costs have to add up in this way. If someone steals $10 from me, and it’s going to cost $100 to very publicly get my $10 back and make an example of that thief, that may well be worth it to me.
Because there are lots of factors such as deterring other thieves, feeling justice was done etc etc.
That’s not to say that I think all the response to 9/11 was correct, far from it. But I think the idea of “We spent $3 trillion when building + people is only $120 billion, so it was wrong” is based on a number of flawed premises.
(Selected simply because it would be more compact than other similar quotes) Some of you are thinking of a specific terrorist group and a specific situation, others may be thinking in more general terms.
I find it difficult to believe that Tim McVeigh, the folks from IRA, ETA or the Brigatte Rosse didn’t give a rat’s ass about the political situation in their target countries, and there is ample evidence that the “local jihadists” are recruited thanks to being in bad situations in that society they want to blow up.
Well, if you take the IRA’s “target country” to be Britain, no, they didn’t care greatly about political conditions in Britain. It was conditions in Ireland that interested them; conditions in Britain were of interest only in so far as they had implications for Ireland. Likewise ETA’s primary concern was the Basque Country; conditions in the rest of Spain were not of primary interest.
I don’t believe that the 9/11 attacks were motivated to the smallest degree by political conditions in the US. The attackers were much more concerned about the actions of the US outside the US - especially the actions of the US that affected the Islamic world.
And this isn’t just true of terrorists; you can generalise it. For most non-USonians, their attitude to the US is primarily driven by the impact the US has on them and their society. Sticking with Muslims for a moment, it’s not at all contradictory (and I suspect not at all unusual) for a Muslim living in the Middle East to think (a) that Muslims living in the US are in an enviable position as regards freedom, prosperity and other good things, and (b) US policies are selfish, and are damaging to many societies in the Middle East.
Serious, far from being envious of freedoms in the US, most AQ members probably don’t give a rat’s ass about them. It’s what (they perceive) the US does outside the US that bothers them.
Fine, so the guy from Nigeria received training from some criminals based in Nigeria. Also, the Nigerian government failed to arrest those criminals despite the US government asking them to. (essentially the situation in Afghanistan)
Do you see how blowing a billion dollars is to far? $100 to punish someone for a $10 theft is one thing. That’s only a difference of 10x. But a security guard is only worth about 10 million bucks - a billion is a 100x difference, at least.
Now, 3000 people is more than 1 person. It’s still a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the United States, however.
But why do you think the response must be N times what the original act cost?
It’s completely uncoupled is what I and others are trying to say.
In your example with the security guard we would want to make sure that kind of event doesn’t happen again, because the president might be the next victim. Perhaps using bombing but more likely just beefing up intelligence for that region, assisting Nigerian police, maybe some special forces raids etc. It might cost less than $10 million it might cost 100x that.
How much we’re willing to spend on such an endeavor depends upon how much money is available and how serious we think the threat is. It’s not a function of what the original precipitating act cost, it’s more like a function of what we think it would cost us not to act.
7/7 in London, Paris, etc, etc: this has been the reaction - we chose to invade.
You’re equation is totally off for another reason.
The 3 trillion wasn’t spent on punishing the purpetrators of 9/11 but mostly on the destruction of a totally innocent country.
According to your arithmetic, how much should the US pay the Iraqi people, for all the lives destroyed?
Their attacks didn’t only take place in “Britain” or in “the rest of Spain”. Many of the people they killed or extorted were “their own” by their geographical definitions.
Hell, ETA’s biggest attack outside Euskal Herria was specifically targeted towards reducing the support they were getting from the area attacked - I’d say that counts as being interested in conditions there, but maybe I should watch more TV and read less.
But it’s impossible to “make sure” such an event can’t happen again. Only reason the terrorists haven’t done another similar scale attack is that it would take more resources to pull it off. It is by no means impossible, just more difficult.
You can’t construct a better strawman than that?
I was simply trying to say “If it makes no sense to do action B when event N happens, it still does not make sense to do it when 3000*N happens.” Sorry if you feel I was straw-manning.
The problem here is that the citizenry of the USA democracy do feel that 3000*N is different. For one thing, because the media covers it a lot more. And the government responds to this demand for revenge by getting some. So far so good I guess. Those citizens can in fact afford to spend 3000 billion slaughtering residents of a different country, since they produced 189 trillion in GDP over the same period of time.
It still was a poor decision. And those citizens also collectively decided they didn’t want to actually pay the bills as they were generated for the war they demand, so now they get to pay a bunch of interest charges as well…
Not democracy’s greatest success story.
The invasion of Iraq wasn’t, no; but going after Al Qaeda was certainly the right thing to do.
Sure. But that ain’t necessarily so every time.
My point is that the country in which a terrorist movement targets operations and the country in which a terrorist movement wishes to effect change are not necessarily the same place. The IRA conducted operations in Britain, and operations in Ireland targeted against British forces, and operations in Ireland targeted against Irish people. But had no interest in effecting change in Britain; only in the last of those three classes of operation could it really be said their victims were “their own”.
And the same goes for Islamist terrorism. Most of their victims are in fact Muslims living in the Islamic world which the terrorists wish to change. But when they attack, e.g., Americans in the US, it’s not because they wish to change the US, or because they hate the freedoms that Americans enjoy. They do this with the objective of changing conditions in the Islamic world by undermining political support for the continuation of US policies in that part of the world.
I think the Doolittle Raid is a great point of comparison:
I’ve been meaning to read that book, and now I will.