# Was a very low-key, less costly response to 9/11 practical? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 7, 2015, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018 "2015-04-07T03:29:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/41 "2015-04-08T14:16:33Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > See last word. That’s a quote from the article, btw, not me. But I saw it. And? ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/42 "2015-04-08T14:28:15Z")
What’s unreasonable about demanding the unconditional transfer of someone who just killed 3,000 people? What is known is that Clinton and Bush officials made 33 requests for bin Laden to be extradited after the 1998 embassy bombings. The Taliban continually responded with BS - there’s no evidence; Saddam did it; etc. All this after providing the evidence that UBL was responsible for the embassy bombings. [http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB134/index.htm?utm\_source=wordtwit&utm\_medium=social&utm\_campaign=wordtwit](http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB134/index.htm?utm_source=wordtwit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wordtwit) Seriously, how stupid must one take the State Department to be not to recognize three years worth of sandbagging? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/43 "2015-04-08T14:35:49Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > 9/11 led to an enormously costly war in Afghanistan. (Yes, Iraq was a bad war, but we’ll leave that out for now.) > Was a much more low-key, subtler approach - like the Israeli assassination campaign after the 1972 Munich Olympic attacks - practical? Think subtle, nonstop assassinations and targeted hit jobs on al-Qaeda day in and day out, but no huge ground force operations, no hugely expensive war, etc. Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t really separable, AFAIAC. The main reason why our involvement in Afghanistan has been unending (so far) is that the Bush Administration was diverting resources, not to mention its attention, from Afghanistan to Iraq from early 2002 onward, so we never really got to a point where we could exit Afghanistan in a decent fashion. Iraq made Afghanistan enormously costly. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/44 "2015-04-08T14:40:54Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > That is insanity. You are implying that there should have been no response to a bloody attack that left 3,000 Americans dead-simply put that the government should not have undertaken its most basic function, ensuing the security of its citizen body. And the fact is the anti-Al Qaeda war worked-the past decade and a half has not seen the sort of series of large-scale Islamist attacks upon American assets at home and abroad (outside of the context of war) that we saw in the 1990s. The [long-term strategy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Strategy) of al Qaeda appears to have been that single dramatic, provocative attack. The more the US tries to engage them, the more it plays into their plan. Ignoring them would have been the best response, starting wars was the worst one. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/45 "2015-04-08T14:54:57Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > The [long-term strategy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Strategy) of al Qaeda appears to have been that single dramatic, provocative attack. The more the US tries to engage them, the more it plays into their plan. Ignoring them would have been the best response, starting wars was the worst one. Not at all. If we’d have ignored them then that would have played into their plans as well, since it would have weakened our influence with the PTB in the region. Look at their overall strategy from your link: > [@](#): > > Strategy > > On March 11, 2005, Al-Quds Al-Arabi published extracts from Saif al-Adel’s document “Al Qaeda’s Strategy to the Year 2020”.[93][94] Abdel Bari Atwan summarizes this strategy as comprising five stages to rid the Ummah from all forms of oppression: > > ``` > Provoke the United States and the West into invading a Muslim country by staging a massive attack or string of attacks on US soil that results in massive civilian casualties. > Incite local resistance to occupying forces. > Expand the conflict to neighboring countries, and engage the US and its allies in a long war of attrition. > Convert al-Qaeda into an ideology and set of operating principles that can be loosely franchised in other countries without requiring direct command and control, and via these franchises incite attacks against the US and countries allied with the US until they withdraw from the conflict, as happened with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, but which did not have the same effect with the July 7, 2005 London bombings. > The US economy will finally collapse by the year 2020, under the strain of multiple engagements in numerous places, making the worldwide economic system, which is dependent on the U.S., also collapse, leading to global political instability, which in turn leads to a global jihad led by al-Qaeda, and a Wahhabi Caliphate will then be installed across the world, following the collapse of the U.S. and the rest of the Western world countries. > > ``` > > Atwan also noted, regarding the collapse of the U.S., “If this sounds far-fetched, it is sobering to consider that this virtually describes the downfall of the Soviet Union.”[93] > > According to Fouad Hussein, a Jordanian journalist and author who has spent time in prison with Al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s strategy plan consists of 7 phases and is similar to the plan described in Al Qaeda’s Strategy to the year 2020:[95] > > ``` > The Awakening. This phase was supposed to last from 2001 to 2003. The goal of the phase is to provoke the United States to attack a Muslim country by executing an attack on US soil that kills many civilians. > Opening Eyes This phase was supposed to last from 2003 to 2006. The goal of this phase was to recruit young men to the cause and to transform the al-Qaeda organization into a movement. Iraq was supposed to become the center of all operations with financial and military support for bases in other states. > Arising and Standing up, was supposed to last from 2007 to 2010. In this phase, al-Qaeda wanted to execute additional attacks and focus their attention on Syria. Hussein believed that other countries in the Arabian Peninsula were also in danger. > In the fourth phase, al-Qaeda expected a steady growth among their ranks and territories due to the declining power of the regimes in the Arabian Peninsula. The main focus of attack in this phase was supposed to be on oil suppliers and Cyberterrorism, targeting the US economy and military infrastructure. > The fifth phase is the declaration of an Islamic Caliphate, which was projected between 2013 and 2016. In this phase, al-Qaeda expected the resistance from Israel to be heavily reduced. > The sixth phase is described as the declaration of an "Islamic Army" and a "fight between believers and non-believers", also called "total confrontation". > Definitive Victory, the seventh and last phase is projected to be completed by 2020. The world will be "beaten down" by the Islamic Army. According to the 7 phase strategy, the war isn't projected to last longer than 2 years. > > ``` Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy, so while it’s true that our war in Iraq especially hurt us badly, it hasn’t exactly been beer and skittles for AQ either. In fact, we hurt them a lot more than they expected, and their great plan pretty much fell apart. Oh, there has been a declaration of an Islamic Caliphate all right…but it wasn’t by AQ and they have little to no control over what ISIS/ISIL does or says. The two groups aren’t exactly on the same page either. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/46 "2015-04-08T15:03:02Z")
And here we have the George Costanza School of Foriegn Policy: just do the opposite of what someone wants you to do! It is closely linked to the DailyKoz response to GOP policies/NewsMax response to Democratic policies, also known as the Horse Feathers reply: [“Whatever it is, I’m against it!”](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e7cry-4pyy8) Personally, I think we should choose our own policies, rather than flit and flitter among policies that someone else might not want us to do. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/47 "2015-04-08T15:27:11Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > The more the US tries to engage them, the more it plays into their plan. Ignoring them would have been the best response, starting wars was the worst one. The US isn’t a dictatorship that could afford to ignore al-Qaeda and not have to answer to voters for it. It’s a democracy with elections. Willfully ignoring al-Qaeda after 2,000 Americans were killed would mean a landslide electoral defeat for the party in power later on. It wasn’t doable. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/48 "2015-04-08T15:28:53Z")
So we should elect Ted Cruz president in order to get this bombing of Iran taken care of. Because the US has way too few enemies in the region, we need more. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/49 "2015-04-08T15:32:38Z")
That’s not what I said at all. Read again. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/50 "2015-04-08T15:37:12Z")
I was not responding to you, I did not even see your post at the time (sort of ninja effect). It was just some nebulous sarcasm, lightly dusted with anxiety. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/51 "2015-04-08T15:37:57Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > And here we have the George Costanza School of Foriegn Policy: just do the opposite of what someone wants you to do! It is closely linked to the DailyKoz response to GOP policies/NewsMax response to Democratic policies, also known as the Horse Feathers reply: [“Whatever it is, I’m against it!”](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e7cry-4pyy8) > > Personally, I think we should choose our own policies, rather than flit and flitter among policies that someone else might not want us to do. Pretty much. Just because it’s what they thought they wanted us to do doesn’t mean they were right and that we should do the opposite. As it turns out, there was enough stupid on both sides (all sides really) to go around, with them miscalculating and us having Bush the Younger at the helm and leading the great ship USA Titanic and our merry friends onto the Iraqi shoals when we had no reason to do that…and Saddam giving us his take on how to play chicken with a pissed off superpower and lose as well. Every time I think of how this all played out I hear the Benny Hill theme music playing and see it all moving in fast motion right off a cliff of massive stupidity. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/52 "2015-04-08T16:35:59Z")
Thinking about this further, AQ’s aims were probably more like, “Draw the US into a war where we inflict mounting casualties on them, humbling the American populace into collapse and withdrawal from the Holy Lands, leading to the destruction of Zionism and the re-establishment of the Caliphate, ruling in the Name of Mohammad, Peace Be Upon Him.” So we didn’t do exactly what they wanted. Instead it was more like overthrow AQ’s allies, force AQ leadership to flee, harassed and killed most of them with drones, and eventually broke the back of central AQ so all they can do now is endorse upstart extremists who mostly just kill other Muslims. I’m reasonably sure that isn’t want UBL wanted to happen. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/53 "2015-04-08T16:46:38Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > The [long-term strategy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Strategy) of al Qaeda appears to have been that single dramatic, provocative attack. The more the US tries to engage them, the more it plays into their plan. Ignoring them would have been the best response, starting wars was the worst one. And if their goal was to get us to invade, if we didn’t after 9/11 what would they do? Tear up their plan? Or stage an even bigger attack to force an invasion. As it turned out “invading” Afghanistan with popular support and minimal US forces was a good strategy. Devoting the resources to truly cleaning out the Taliban would have been a better one. ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/54 "2015-04-08T17:13:32Z")
What basis is there to assume that AQ had the capability to launch an attack even remotely close to 9/11 in destructiveness, after 9/11 itself, regardless of how we responded? You could just as well argue that 9/11 was a fluke event that required the elements of surprise and luck, and which became much more difficult to replicate after 9/11 introduced the idea of airplanes being used as missiles. (Prior to 9/11, people on a hijacked airliner would be reasonable to assume that they might live if they cooperated. People with Saudi passports could come to the US for flight training, no questions asked. Cockpit doors weren’t locked. Etc.) I know that after 9/11 people overwhelmingly expected there to be a series of huge follow-on attacks, contributing to the sense of urgency behind invading Afghanistan, but those never materialized and AFAIK no evidence of such plots ever surfaced. In retrospect, people who extrapolated from 9/11 to expect lots and lots of new attacks were wrong and had fallen prey to availability bias. So if no major new attacks were forthcoming, then ex hypothesi wiping out AQ was not necessary to prevent new attacks. What we should have done was launch a massive punitive exercise–bombing raids, targeted assassinations, etc.–that limited the cost to ourselves. That strikes me as the optimal response and one that puts the tragedy of 9/11 in reasonable perspective. Something along the lines of Reagan’s response to the Beirut attacks. Instead, we spent hundreds of billions of dollars, sacrificed thousands of American lives, and got ourselves bogged down in a decade-long-plus morass that may not even have succeeded in altering the long-term course of Afghanistan. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/55 "2015-04-08T19:21:53Z")
They’d probably not use another plane. But they did attack trains. Other terrorists have attacked malls. There is no shortage of vulnerable locations in a free society. And, as others have mentioned, the cost of the Afghan War was increased due to the incompetence of the Bush administration in moving resources to the unnecessary invasion of Iraq. If you have a strategy for defeating embedded terrorist organizations cheaply, please tell those in charge how it would work for ISIS. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/56 "2015-04-08T19:23:10Z")
> [@Donald\_Rump](#): > > What basis is there to assume that AQ had the capability to launch an attack even remotely close to 9/11 in destructiveness, after 9/11 itself, regardless of how we responded? Al Qaeda bombed two American embassies, a Barracks in Saudi Arabia, nearly sunk a US destroyer, detonated a truck bomb in the World Trade Center, came within inches of taking down an airliner in the Philippines, got caught while planning to blow up 11 airliners over the Pacific, and affiliates have planned numerous other plots including several underwear bombing schemes that we were basically lucky that they were not successful. And you’re implying they might have been out of ideas? ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/57 "2015-04-08T19:58:47Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Al Qaeda bombed two American embassies, a Barracks in Saudi Arabia, nearly sunk a US destroyer, detonated a truck bomb in the World Trade Center, came within inches of taking down an airliner in the Philippines, got caught while planning to blow up 11 airliners over the Pacific, and affiliates have planned numerous other plots including several underwear bombing schemes that we were basically lucky that they were not successful. > > And you’re implying they might have been out of ideas? I’m not saying AQ was out of ideas. The point is that spending $1.5 trillion in response to 9/11 made sense only if you thought AQ somehow had the capability of pulling off an attack, or series of attacks, that killed say 150,000 people. (I am using the EPA’s $9MM [value of a statistical life](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Estimates_of_the_value_of_life) to come up with that number.) Everything that you’ve listed demonstrates that AQ was/is evil and an enormous nuisance, but unless there was reason to think AQ was going to plant a nuclear weapon in the middle of Manhattan, our response was massively disproportionate to the threat that AQ posed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Otherwise, there is no principled reason other than emotion and politics that we spent $1.5 trillion and thousands of American lives in the war on terror rather than devoting those resources to preventing the 40,000 auto fatalities this country suffers each year, or any other number of public health and wellbeing issues. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/58 "2015-04-08T20:09:37Z")
I’m not familiar with that $1.5 trillion figure for response to AQ. Where did you get it? And to be clear, the major cost of Afghanistan wasn’t killing AQ terrorists. It was trying to build a somewhat modern, responsible government. Which I believe we probably he the responsibility to do simply as a moral matter after invading the place to get to AQ. I am not in any way minimizing the American lives lost there, but I generally think that helping to improve other countries is an important thing for the US to do, and we should do more of it as a general policy matter. ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/59 "2015-04-08T20:32:48Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > I’m not familiar with that $1.5 trillion figure for response to AQ. Where did you get it? The figure comes from the Mercatus Center and the Congressional Budget Office, as summarized by [Forbes](http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/03/the-war-on-terror-has-cost-taxpayers-1-7-trillion-infographic/). (I was rounding down from $1.6-1.7 trillion.) These figures aren’t restricted to the intervention in Afghanistan but the entire War on Terror as they define it. > [@](#): > > And to be clear, the major cost of Afghanistan wasn’t killing AQ terrorists. It was trying to build a somewhat modern, responsible government. Which I believe we probably he the responsibility to do simply as a moral matter after invading the place to get to AQ. I agree with you that we had a responsibility to help create some kind of stable government, once we got so involved. In my view, that’s another line item that should have prospectively been put in the “cost” side of the ledger by our esteemed policymakers at the time we were contemplating invading Afghanistan. That’s exactly why in my view it’s a good idea to calibrate policy responses proportionally to the problem. Again, Reagan didn’t go and invade Lebanon and then get stuck with the inevitable subsequent nation-building exercise. Instead, he lobbed some missiles, cut our losses, and rapidly changed the subject to Grenada. I think we should have bombed the crap out of whatever AQ targets we could find, and then invest in intelligence and law-enforcement capabilities to mitigate the threat of further attacks. > [@](#): > > I am not in any way minimizing the American lives lost there, but I generally think that helping to improve other countries is an important thing for the US to do, and we should do more of it as a general policy matter. If you’re willing to go out and die face down in the muck for the sake of people in far-flung lands, I commend you for your charity and love of man. I cannot say the same for myself, and my test is whether I would be willing to die, not whether I’d be willing to send other Americans I’ve never met to their deaths. I would also be more supportive of such actions if they didn’t so frequently do more harm than good (see: Libya, Iraq, Vietnam, possibly Afghanistan). My bias is to favor a generally much more restrained foreign policy as far as military engagements go, but I understand where humanitarian interventionists are coming from. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018/60 "2015-04-08T20:48:36Z")
> [@Donald\_Rump](#): > > The figure comes from the Mercatus Center and the Congressional Budget Office, as summarized by [Forbes](http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/03/the-war-on-terror-has-cost-taxpayers-1-7-trillion-infographic/). (I was rounding down from $1.6-1.7 trillion.) These figures aren’t restricted to the intervention in Afghanistan but the entire War on Terror as they define it. Ah, thanks. In my opinion, every cent spent on Iraq has nothing to do with Al Qaeda or 9/11. Perhaps we should chalk those costs up to having the worst president in 150 years, and disassociate it from terrorism. Bush probably would have tried to build a case for invading Iraq even if 9/11 didn’t happen, IMHO. > [@](#): > > Again, Reagan didn’t go and invade Lebanon and then get stuck with the inevitable subsequent nation-building exercise. Instead, he lobbed some missiles, cut our losses, and rapidly changed the subject to Grenada. Uh, that wasn’t a shrewd move by the Gipper. We ran out of Beirut as fast as possible after the attack on the Marine barracks. ] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-a-very-low-key-less-costly-response-to-9-11-practical/717018.md?page=4)