Is the War on Terrorism Worth It?

[Marat]

While the gigantic financial meltdown of 2008 wiped $1.8 trillion in value off the nation's books, the War on Terrorism from 2001 to 2009 had already cost $2.4 trillion, against a total value of all goods and services produced in the United States of $17.5 trillion. Although the number of people killed in the 9/11 tragedy was only equal to the number of people killed every year in the United States by accidental drowning -- a problem which attracts very little funding -- the money spent preventing another 9/11 amounts to $800 million per person killed, or about 700 times more than the value ordinarily assigned to a human life lost by someone else's negligence in a tort suit.

 

To determine whether the 9/11 attacks were a catastrophic but rare event, a one-off crime committed by a group of about 100 well-funded individuals -- really just another blip in the series of terrorist attacks which began with the Anarchists' assassination of President McKinley, continued with the explosion of a wagon filled with nails on Wall Street in the 1920s, and persisted through the plane hijackings of the 1970s -- or the first salvo in a never-ending, new Third World War of the West against Terrorism, would really have to be determined by a blue-ribbon commission of experts studying the event for a year or so. But instead, a day after the event, a single 'gentleman's C' history student from Yale, George Bush II, jumped atop the rubble in Manhattan and screamed through a megaphone that this tragedy could only possibly be understood as the inauguration of a New World War that would forever require inflated funding for the military-industrial complex, would perfectly compensate for the lack of excuses for large military budgets caused by the end of the Cold War, would require police powers to be enhanced and civil liberties to be curtailed, and would also, as a side-effect, forever require domestic programs to be severely underfunded or slashed so that the massive diversion of tax money to war contractors would not generate too great a deficit. That all these results of the event being interpreted as the beginning of a new, perpetual World War rather than an unfortunate but unique crime just happened to support traditional Republican Party policy preferences was of course just a lucky coincidence.

 

Makes you wonder if the spending is really worth it.

[Mr Skeptic]

Nope, waging wars against abstract concepts is rather pointless. It reminds me of the war in Orwell's 1984, where an unwinnable war is the objective for the effects it has on the population. If we stopped funding terrorism it might be easier to beat the terrorists, huh?

[Pangloss]

I do think we're going to have to review the growth of security operations and their budgets, and the affect they've had on both the bottom line and life in general (e.g. security at the airport).

 

Unfortunately this particular growth has been embraced by both political parties. There's no momentum or even basic interest in changing it. So you're going to have to throw out sitting Republicans and Democrats alike if you want to address this.

[ParanoiA]

Well probably never for a utilitarian perspective. Neither would Pearl Harbor justify the spending in WWII, or even retaliating and doing any kind of war. Would have been cheaper to say sorry, and lift the embargo.

 

I think it's absolutely worth it to kill humans who kill humans. I would always spend more money to chase down and kill humans that kill less than non-humans that kill humans. You can effect the psychology of would-be human killers of other humans before they begin killing. But you can't threaten water, or dissuade water from drowning people by killing other water as an example. So, one may be able to argue that spending lots of money to kill humans could pay off slowly over time as other humans take notice and refrain from it.

 

The main difference being that drowning is an internal failure by a subject, murder is an external violation by another subject. We can't change the nature of objects of reality, like water, but we can change the nature of subjects of reality, like humans.

 

Of course, none of this speaks of ethics.

[needimprovement]

We're not really fighting a war on terrorism, we're actually opposing in an armed fashion Radical Islamists that are chiefly in Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. in order to fight terrorism you need to fight at the terrorists level creating a greater threat from you than from them, and the US is too squeemish to do that.

[lemur]

We're not really fighting a war on terrorism, we're actually opposing in an armed fashion Radical Islamists that are chiefly in Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. in order to fight terrorism you need to fight at the terrorists level creating a greater threat from you than from them, and the US is too squeemish to do that.

 

Actually, using violence as a deterrence for violence creates a cycle of fear leading to attack of the threat associated with the fear. Terrorism thus consists of the cycle of the two mutually invigorating forces or expressions: 1) fear 2) violence against a perceived threat. When I learned about Ghandi's claim about non-violence that one has to be in a position to commit violence to resist it, I just happened to come across news photos of Osama Bin Ladin sitting cross-legged with a peaceful look on his face and a machine-gun resting in his lap. I also saw photos of GW Bush in military gear standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier, a more powerful weapon than a machine-gun but his demeanor was similar to Bin Ladin's, i.e. peaceful and securely in control of the violent machine at his disposal. Now, compare that to the general popular attitude toward both these men, which was overflowing with fear, anger, and calls to violence. So, imo, what the war on terror was really about was recognizing that cycles of fear and violence had intensified and expanded for many people during the 1990s and that the tensions had to be de-escalated by making people responsible for their power so that they would learn to control it more calmly. Obviously people had the power to commit acts of terrorism and launch a global campaign to intimidate people against committing terrorism. What was lacking was the ability to control and resist these two opposing types of power - and I think the war on terror has accomplished that to some extent, although I don't know what an alternative would be that you could compare it to and thereby measure relative success or failure. Ultimately, I think the fact is that everything that occurred as part of the war on terror occurred as a response to earlier events, so the war on terror was not just a choice about how to respond to terrorism, but it was almost a natural effect of that terrorism itself. Power breeds more power, but it also breeds resistance and the war on terror seemed to involve many different stages of expansionary power breeding resistance. Was it a success? Everyone who survived won to some extent, no? Although everyone who survived also lost to some degree as well.

[needimprovement]

This has become a struggle of philosophy - idealism, or the image of optimal human condition. Trying to defeat idealism with an army is proving about as effective as the war on drugs, as evidenced by the recruiting power of our successes as well as our missteps. Sure, the struggle with the Taliban and al Qaeda is about power, but their absolute commitment to their religious based drive for control is a philosophical motivator.

 

One could argue that idealism is not a destructive force. However, whether or not terrorism is destructive is a matter of perspective, as usually is the decision whether or not to use drugs and feed the demand.

 

For that reason it's less an issue of defeating something that amounts to using destruction to achieve what some people honestly believe is the worthwhile end, and more about changing people's minds about what is that worthwhile end. So long as people can point to our destruction while we try to end some other group's destruction, the struggle in winning over idealists will continue and we'll eventually lose. But war is a really ugly business and no matter how we try to run a gentleman's war, so to speak, even honest mistakes will be pointed to as wilful destruction so it's possible this thing isn't winnable, ever.

[lemur]

This has become a struggle of philosophy - idealism, or the image of optimal human condition. Trying to defeat idealism with an army is proving about as effective as the war on drugs, as evidenced by the recruiting power of our successes as well as our missteps. Sure, the struggle with the Taliban and al Qaeda is about power, but their absolute commitment to their religious based drive for control is a philosophical motivator.

 

One could argue that idealism is not a destructive force. However, whether or not terrorism is destructive is a matter of perspective, as usually is the decision whether or not to use drugs and feed the demand.

 

For that reason it's less an issue of defeating something that amounts to using destruction to achieve what some people honestly believe is the worthwhile end, and more about changing people's minds about what is that worthwhile end. So long as people can point to our destruction while we try to end some other group's destruction, the struggle in winning over idealists will continue and we'll eventually lose. But war is a really ugly business and no matter how we try to run a gentleman's war, so to speak, even honest mistakes will be pointed to as wilful destruction so it's possible this thing isn't winnable, ever.

What makes you think that any war is ever winnable or that any war is not driven by conflict between idealists? You talk as if it's possible not to be an idealist or to accept loss as an option? These positions seem self-deluding to me. Everyone ultimately has ideals and/or a worldview that they assert over others. Everyone expects to win and dominate, even if it's only by delineating an autonomous territory for themselves as an individual and being sovereign within that territory. Those who claim not to seek autonomy, sovereignty, or dominance are usually doing so because they have found peace in subjugating themselves to some external authority. But the question is whether they are willing to stand by while that authority is dominated by a conflicting authority and simply re-subjugate themselves to the new authority, and so forth when it happens again, always accepting the consequences and never resisting power with their own independent authority. Mostly, people tend to self-delude by criticizing the other and differentiating themselves from that. By doing this, they are always one step ahead of having to come to terms with and take responsibility for their own positions and actions. They seek to focus on and control others instead.

 

You say, "whether or not terrorism is a destructive force is a matter of perspective," but I wonder if you would say that if you were trying to democratically pursue your own ideals and the response you got was repression-by-intimidation and other fear-inducing violence. Would you still say that the destructiveness of your persecution was "a matter of perspective?" Yours sounds like the position of someone who has always been on the winning side of domination. I think there are many people for whom democracy is just a lot more trouble than they're used to so they favor logics of separation of differences and non-engagement of conflict. They assume that by doing so, they will never have to be confronted with anything that makes them uncomfortable - but to achieve that level of domination, you have to not only be able to win war but also to maintain a sustainable repressive regime thereafter. I don't advocate either, but rather democracy, but to achieve that you have to win against terror-driven repressive control, so one way or the other someone has to win and achieve peace and freedom by doing so, and ideally it would be everyone involved that does.

Edited September 28, 2010 by lemur

[padren]

Counter terrorism is worthwhile, but a War on Terror certainly isn't. We reacted to 9-11 the same way we reacted to Pearl Harbor, and it was entirely the wrong response. When we were attacked by Japan, we quickly rallied to do "all that it takes" and that is a good thing - you can't put a price-tag on sovereignty (at least not within the American mentality). WWII was the right place to go all out and stop at nothing to defeat our enemies.

 

On the other hand 9-11, was far more of a symptom of a growing problem in regional instabilities providing environments for local extremists to act on a global stage. I completely disagree with how we declared the "war on terror" but I totally agree that we had to look at the whole globe in a new way to assess an ignored problem - even when Jon Stewart talks about the money-sink that has become the two wars and criticize the Afghanistan efforts, I can't help but to feel like the problem is so large because it has been so ignored for so long.

 

It's like having your septic back up in the sink, and not being able to understand why it's so expensive to "fix the sink" when that's not even the scope of the problem. However, the real tragedy in my mind is just how much we have treated it like a war. It's a fact that it's part of the American way that when Americans at home die in large attacks from foreign sources, the military expects a blank check, and the public expects no expense to be spared. How we reacted to Pearl Harbor pretty much convinced the Japanese that the war was already lost. That sort of reaction only strengthens terrorist groups - they want a huge reaction, and they want their own existence validated. They want to be taken seriously as a player on the stage.

 

 

We should have treated it like a really bad slum or ghetto... the police won't go there, and some people go out from there and rob / kill people in other wealthy neighborhoods. It's a gang problem on a global scale but you can't solve gang violence by treating gang-laden neighborhoods as enemy states. You have to assess why those neighborhoods are vulnerable and address those vulnerabilities. You may have to send in troops and even blow a lot of stuff up on ops, but if it's treated like a straight up war (get Japan to surrender, build a democracy there) you're basically going to fail.

Edited September 28, 2010 by padren

[lemur]

if it's treated like a straight up war (get Japan to surrender, build a democracy there) you're basically going to fail.

 

My impression prior to and at the beginning of the war on terror was that it was supposed to be a new kind of warfare the changed the ideology of war altogether. It was not, for example, supposed to be a war between nations at all but rather a war between democracy/freedom and terror-driven repressive control. It was also supposed to achieve peace globally by providing for the expression of war-effort (can't remember which Bush speech this was but I recall him saying it). Still, many people didn't and still don't get it, and so they keep re-framing it within their own traditionalist frameworks of war, which assume a national rather than global world where one side wins a war by dominating the other side. Part of this war was to challenge that way of thinking, but stubborn minds stay closed.

[padren]

My impression prior to and at the beginning of the war on terror was that it was supposed to be a new kind of warfare the changed the ideology of war altogether. It was not, for example, supposed to be a war between nations at all but rather a war between democracy/freedom and terror-driven repressive control. It was also supposed to achieve peace globally by providing for the expression of war-effort (can't remember which Bush speech this was but I recall him saying it). Still, many people didn't and still don't get it, and so they keep re-framing it within their own traditionalist frameworks of war, which assume a national rather than global world where one side wins a war by dominating the other side. Part of this war was to challenge that way of thinking, but stubborn minds stay closed.

 

I think even framing it as a democracy/freedom vs. oppression/terror is the wrong way. We don't have terrorists from China hitting us, and they are not a democracy. If it boiled down to those polarities the whole world would be in a lot more trouble. Even take Iran - most people thought of it as a relatively backwards superstitious and violent middle eastern country until the post-election riots. There was a lot of talk on the news about those protests and the need to support those fighting on the streets for Western style freedoms- but they weren't. They were fighting for Iranian style freedoms that most Westerners still don't understand and even those protesters don't want to see Iran become like the west. They want a less radical and less intolerant Iran that is more responsive to the values of the younger generations emerging there, but they don't see us as an ideal model.

 

We do need nations to understand that there is a degree of responsibility for the conduct of even rogue elements within their borders that if they don't fix, we will have to by force should they risk boiling over, but most of those nation states don't want to attack the US, they want to rule their nations corruptly and ignore the festering problems caused by poverty, lawlessness and instability. Terrorist groups take advantage of those problems in the same way gangs recruit in slums and as such it becomes our (advanced nations) problem. The solution however isn't to obliterate and erect a democracy in every case though. In some cases it can be better solved with countering corruption, or supporting the efforts for internal change towards stability, even if it retains some qualities (more akin to China) we may not prefer.

 

If we found out that Cuba was being used by terrorists to plan attacks here despite their government's attempts to stop them, how would we solve it?

 

1) We could blow it all up, erect a democracy, and fight off the locals who violently oppose us and will side with terrorists against us to preserve their sovereignty.

2) We could help them clean up the problems that create that risk in the first place and work with them to find and detain terrorist cells even if we don't like their government model.

 

Option (2) would probably even require a different "partner in the fight against terror" than ourselves, as there has been too much mistrust for too long between Cuba and ourselves, but it would probably be far more worth while, result effective, and cost effective overall. Sometimes an analysis will demonstrate that the risk factors are systemic to the mechanism of government in place and those in power will fight to preserve it. In those cases we can carry out operations in within their borders and basically say "You could hit us, but I recommend staying out of our way" while supporting internal reform movements... or bite the bullet and engage in a full scale invasion of the country. Due to the costs though, to both us and to noncombatants just trying to survive there we need to be real about what that commitment will take and not do so with cavalier bravado.

[JohnB]

What makes you think that any war is ever winnable

 

Um, history?

[lemur]

I think even framing it as a democracy/freedom vs. oppression/terror is the wrong way. We don't have terrorists from China hitting us, and they are not a democracy. If it boiled down to those polarities the whole world would be in a lot more trouble. Even take Iran - most people thought of it as a relatively backwards superstitious and violent middle eastern country until the post-election riots. There was a lot of talk on the news about those protests and the need to support those fighting on the streets for Western style freedoms- but they weren't. They were fighting for Iranian style freedoms that most Westerners still don't understand and even those protesters don't want to see Iran become like the west. They want a less radical and less intolerant Iran that is more responsive to the values of the younger generations emerging there, but they don't see us as an ideal model.

Freedom/democracy has nothing to do with assimilating to be "like the west" or anything else. It's about self-determination and balance between hegemonies/counter-hegemonies. Also, I think you're taking a very superficial view of terrorism when you say that "we don't have terrorists from China hitting us." Since terrorism is not a nation vs. nation thing, ultimately, you really have no idea which individuals support or reject terrorist activities generally. The whole point of taking a global approach instead of a nationalist one is seeing that the world is composed of conflicting interests that do not obey national unity. There are people in China and Cuba who feel enough security and freedom to engage in a certain degree of self-determination in at least some of their activities; while there are others who feel very repressed and threatened. Anti-terrorism is, imo, a prolonged project of liberating people from such repression and threat so that they can feel secure enough to express free-will and individual self-determination in their everyday activities. I think many people can't understand this kind of logic because they are mired in some form of authoritarian ideology that leads them the value other things more than freedom or self-determination. Such people are generally living in fear of freedom and democratic self-determination because it poses a threat to their position within some authoritarian structure.

 

We do need nations to understand that there is a degree of responsibility for the conduct of even rogue elements within their borders that if they don't fix, we will have to by force should they risk boiling over, but most of those nation states don't want to attack the US, they want to rule their nations corruptly and ignore the festering problems caused by poverty, lawlessness and instability. Terrorist groups take advantage of those problems in the same way gangs recruit in slums and as such it becomes our (advanced nations) problem. The solution however isn't to obliterate and erect a democracy in every case though. In some cases it can be better solved with countering corruption, or supporting the efforts for internal change towards stability, even if it retains some qualities (more akin to China) we may not prefer.

Dividing the globe in to national regions or other zones is a strategy for controlling people and restricting their freedom. People debate the necessity and desirability of national governance and even engage in violence to assert their position and achieve their goals. The twin tower attacks were a pro-nationalist (i.e. national separatist) response to the looming threat of globalization as it was perceived via the media of the late 90s. I think the strategists behind the attacks targeted the twin towers as a "world trade center" insofar as they wanted to suppress global trade and segregate the global economy into more relatively isolated national economies. This is, of course, my opinion and everyone has theirs.

 

If we found out that Cuba was being used by terrorists to plan attacks here despite their government's attempts to stop them, how would we solve it?

 

1) We could blow it all up, erect a democracy, and fight off the locals who violently oppose us and will side with terrorists against us to preserve their sovereignty.

Kennedy signed this right away during the Cuban missile crisis in exchange for nuclear security.

 

 

Option (2) would probably even require a different "partner in the fight against terror" than ourselves, as there has been too much mistrust for too long between Cuba and ourselves, but it would probably be far more worth while, result effective, and cost effective overall. Sometimes an analysis will demonstrate that the risk factors are systemic to the mechanism of government in place and those in power will fight to preserve it. In those cases we can carry out operations in within their borders and basically say "You could hit us, but I recommend staying out of our way" while supporting internal reform movements... or bite the bullet and engage in a full scale invasion of the country. Due to the costs though, to both us and to noncombatants just trying to survive there we need to be real about what that commitment will take and not do so with cavalier bravado.

Imo, your way of regarding nations as units interacting with one another homogenously is an old fiction that tends to obscure the reality that national unification is just one hegemonic ideology among many used to organize social consciousness and behavior. The globe is a diverse collection of interests and shifting configurations of agents in pursuit of those interests. There is really never any purpose anymore for invasion or occupation of one region by soldiers perceived as foreign to that region except to overcome the local belief that globalism is less than a reality. The anti-globalization protests of the 1990s, imo, represented a shred of hope that global freedom, trade, and migration could be suppressed in favor of national ethnic/cultural homogeneity. I don't think that there is ever going to be global consensus in favor of such homogeneity, so "foreign occupation" is always going to be a terrorist threat, just as war and ethnic-cleansing are going to continue to pose a threat as the flip-side of that coin. Of course, there are also various forms of multi-ethnic peace where democracy and freedom trump dogged violence on the basis of ethnic differences, but the question is what it takes to get from violence to that.

 

Um, history?

History may have recorded many wars as having victors, but look at what happened during WWII. National governments abdicated to occupation only to have underground resistances mobilize until liberation forces arrived to overthrow the occupations. This implies, imo, that wars were never won in the past as well. There was only ever violence, abdication by central authorities, popular resistance to "occupation" or ethnic mixing within the region, and ultimately either more war to try to establish new ethnic-territorial dominance or some form of multi-ethnic peace that didn't require further fighting. My impression is that people tend to declare victory when their ethnic identity is asserted as dominant in a region, but isn't this just self-congratulating on the basis of temporary subjugation of "the enemy other?"

 

 

[Ophiolite]

Unfortunately this particular growth has been embraced by both political parties. There's no momentum or even basic interest in changing it. So you're going to have to throw out sitting Republicans and Democrats alike if you want to address this.

One of the more obvious means of doing this would be the judicious application of terrorism. Isn't irony wonderful?