Was a very low-key, less costly response to 9/11 practical?

[Donald_Rump]

@Ravenman

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.

Fair point and I’m all for treating Iraq as the unforced intervention extraneous to the WoT that it was. Looking at the Congressional Research Service numbers, you’d have to take out about $900bn for Iraq. However, I noticed that they don’t include Dept of Homeland Security ($60bn budget for 2014) and other incremental intelligence/law enforcement costs associated with the WoT.

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.

Not to hijack the thread, but despite the lack of glory in the US response to that attack, was there an alternative that would have better served US interests? Whether motivated by shrewdness or not, ISTM getting out of there ASAP was the right move, and one that would be in-fucking-conceivable under a President B. Hussein Obama.