The New York Times just published this graphic.
To gloss it here, it documents what we have spent — in money — to respond to the attacks of 9/11.
Here’s what it comes to:
The cost to al Qaeda of staging the 9/11 attacks?
About half a million dollars.
Cost to the United States incurred as a direct result of the damage done in the attacks and the immediate economic impact?
$178 billion.
Cost to the United States to implement the Homeland Security state?
$589 billion.
Cost of the wars fought in the wake of the attacks, current and to come?
$2.5 trillion. With a “t.”
That would be roughly the size of the deficit reduction package agreed in the debt limit hostage crisis negotiation this summer.
The total federal debt?
Approximately $14.7 trillion.
The accumulated price in dollars of of 9/11 is in excess of one fifth of that total. The price in lives lost and damaged? I can’t even begin to count.
The first blow in the conflicts that began on 9/11 were struck upon the United States by hostile antagonists. Criminal thugs.
Those that followed? Self inflicted and ongoing.
I’m not going to belabor the politics at this moment — I think the inferences are obvious, and for a day or so, I’d rather devote memory and feeling for the human consequences of what has transpired over this last decade. Uncharacteristically, I’m just going to shut up here.
Image: Paul Gauguin, Vendanges à Arles, or Misères humaines, 1888
Wag
I don’t know if we can put a price on “freedom” but thanks to the NYT I know the price of fear
trollhattan
Perfect setup for this bit of tripe from Krauthammer. I love his “9/11 was our Pearl Harbor.” No, you twisted fuck, Pearl Harbor was our Pearl Harbor.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-911-overreaction-nonsense/2011/09/08/gIQAc727CK_story.html?hpid=z3
Also, too, bomb Iran.
JPL
Immediately after 9/11, there was such unity in our country, it could have been used for good. Cheney and company used us to destroy the country. They did more damage than Al Qaeda and I’m not sure when or if we’ll recover.
jayackroyd
Cliff Schecter gets the whole thing, here.
http://bit.ly/prGG4r
It’s hard to explain to non-NYCers. But we’ll try on Sunday, at Virtually Speaking. http://bit.ly/oyzdjp
Jager
@trollhattan: The Washington Post’s readers didn’t think much of his piece either.
Tehanu
Destroying things is easy and cheap; rebuilding them is expensive and difficult. That would be true even if our national response to 9/11 hadn’t been an orgy of rage and vengeance on people who just looked like the real perpetrators. (I don’t mean our immediate response — the courage of the first responders and the desire everyone seemed to have to join and help in recovery; I mean the long-term response that got hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq killed). As JPL says, our unity and solidarity right after 9/11 could have been forces for good. The tragedy is that we allowed a cabal of power-hungry greedheads to divert those forces to suit their own ends.
The Dangerman
I’ve been pondering a similar “Total Dollars Cost” today…
…for the Blackout of San Diego yesterday. How much economic damage was incurred because some dufus, from reports, didn’t follow standard procedures?
I guess my thoughts percolate down to 2 questions: (1) Does this guy/gal still have a job and (2) If the answer to the previous question is yes, will this lead to the worst Annual Performance Review ever?
Delia
I was reminiscing with some friends this morning. I brought up the terror alerts and the time we were all supposed to run out and buy plastic sheeting and duct tape to protect our homes in case of a dirty bomb. Or something. They’d all blocked out the memory of the duct tape and plastic. Though in retrospect, for those of us of a certain age it was sort of like when we were supposed to hide under our school desks in case of a nuclear attack.
Good times.
srv
Oh, my favorite own metric is – presume we’ve killed 25000 AQ and Taliban (remember, there were only 2K AQ in the first place supposedly), that comes out to like $40M per head.
Calouste
@The Dangerman:
You mean the doofus who signed off on a grid design where one mistake by a lineworker can bring down the electricity for 6 million people? Yeah, that doofus still has a job and that doofus will probably get an excellent performance review this year for increasing the profits for the company and externalizing the costs.
Litlebritdifrnt
There was a guy on MJ this morning (I believe his name was Lawrence Wright) who basically said that OBL had achieved his aim, he has financially crippled the US, just as he did with the USSR. His theory was that the attacks on the WTC were not his aim it was a device, what he wanted to do was financially ruin the US and he knew with the attacks on the WTC that the response would be a massive lashing out at any part of the world where his operatives were and pour trillions of dollars that the US did not have into tracking him and his minions down. In the ten years that the US has spent on “the war on terror” China has spent it building roads, airports, high speed rail systems and other infrastructure.
PS) I am sorry to say it but I am getting a real case of 9/11 fatigue. I mean come on guys. This shit is getting old.
Suffern ACE
This plus the extra $300+ billion a year we ramped up military expenditures annually beyond the wars to fight the axis of evil wherever it may be will allow our children to perhaps be able to get a cup of coffee someday. And not much more.
And since we’re getting our memory caps on, does anyone remember that these wars were an undertaking that Rumsfeld was trying to pull off on the cheap?
Suffern ACE
@srv: And there are always only 25,000 fighters left, no matter how many we kill…All of them number 4 in the organization or higher.
trollhattan
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Yup, and the big 10th Wingnut Christmas(tm) orgy will be one for the books. I’d like to parachute directly to Monday, for one of few times in my life.
Elliecat
@Litlebritdifrnt: Not only that but OBL got us to change our country from one that (at least nominally) decries torture into one that carries it out. Not to mention curtail our own civil liberties, etc. Nothing like making damned sure the terrorists win!
srv
@Suffern ACE: The very fact that we rank these people is a fundamental proof that we don’t get it.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, you can’t clue the clueless.
jo6pac
@Wag:
Thank You because that all it’s about besides we have no rights today in the New Amerika
Suffern ACE
@trollhattan: Pam Gellar will be leading her own commemoration, for those still angry about the Cordoba Center as well as those teed off that the already very expensive memorial that will require $60 million per year to operate (so please pay $25) didn’t come with a stadium for annual events.
PurpleGirl
trollhattan: A probie firefighter was among those killed that day. He and his family lived in the complex where I live. Even though his mother did not want it, a memorial monument was built to the memory of Tommy Ashton. So on Sunday there will be a 10th anniversary remembrance ceremony at the monument. The most that the board of directors would do was not put it outside the building where the Ashton’s lived. So they put it outside of my building and on the side of my apartment. I can avoid the TV shows and such but I have to find something to do and not be home for the ceremony.
jo6pac
@Calouste:
If you have ever worked on something this big then your comment stands, if you haven’t please take in account that even with this person doing a simple change out that this shouldn’t of happened meaning there a problem somewhere else and not with what this person did. Shit Happens another reason there should be a national grid but then at the same time a local one.
El Tiburon
Mission Accomplished.
OBL accomplished his.
The military-industrial-congressional complex accomplished there mission.
You know I really don’t want to pretzel-bass-ackwards into ObamaBashing, but I guess somewhere deep in my heart of hearts, when I punched the button inside that voting booth, that I was voting for the healing to begin. Exactly how that was to occur, I did not know.
But I was so goddamn ready for the Anti-Bush and I was so goddamn sure that was Obama that it would come to pass.
Sadly, no. We are still the same fucking country that BushCo. turned us into 10 years ago. Obama has done nothing to heal this nation. Absolutely nothing.
Jay B.
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Wright wrote The Looming Tower, the definitive book on the planning, execution and aftermath of the attacks, and I largely agree that because of our idiotic political class, our vastly ignorant electorate and our utterly despicable media (who help disinform and keep the electorate amazingly ignorant) helped bin Laden cripple the U.S.
That said, what did he win?
Dennis SGMM
@trollhattan:
America’s Pearl Harbor? How about this:
LINK
Someone remind me of the number of investigations in the wake of 9/11. And how many people were fired as a result of them?
Anyone? Bueller?
jo6pac
@Jay B.:
what did he win?
Your kidding right?
A Mom Anon
@Litlebritdifrnt: It’s creepy death porn at this point. I agree there should be a memorial at the sites,and a commemeration,but dear god it’s enough with the fearful news graphics and spinning any freaking angle to wring more stories out of it. It’s gross.
jo6pac
@Dennis SGMM:
The ones that cared left in discuss those that stayed were promoted. The new business model of govt. and long time model of corp.
Kane
Contrast and compare what Bin Laden & Al-Qaeda failed to achieve for decades with what a handful of twentysomethings started and achieved thus far with the Arab Spring.
Al-Qaeda in large measure has been marginalized and their methods and approach have become antiquated. The mindset of how to bring about real change has dramatically been alterd in the Arab World. This is an invaluable lesson that no price tag can be placed.
Dennis SGMM
I’d like to be the first to respond to your fervent and heartfelt post by saying “Huh?”
El Tiburon
@Kane:
And…that matters to us how?
It does not change the fact that we are all now eagerly anticipating the day will not have to remove our shoes at the airport.
USA! USA! USA!
Dennis SGMM
@El Tiburon:
I heard an interview with U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker. He flatly stated that the price of leaving Afghanistan before we had established a stable government capable of taking care of Afghan security would be a return of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. I suspect that, for various reasons, no administration within our lifetimes is going to say that Al Qaeda has been marginalized unless a newer and nastier set of stateless actors appear on the world stage.
bleh
9/11 was a bee-sting. It hurt, and it did local damage for a time, but the real damage was done by the body to itself, in a wild over-reaction.
That was one very smart bee.
(Note to frothing reactionaries: how many people are killed PER MONTH on the nation’s highways? Answer: one 9/11 per month, every month, like clockwork. Where are the billions — sorry, trillions — for highway safety?)
Elizabelle
Sobering. And maddening.
AZmando
Yup – everytime I have to take off my shoes and belt and watch at the airport, I think about the hassle and indignity OBL caused in addition to the trillion$ spent in stupid wars that are creating his clones.
fuzz
To me one of the weird things about AQ is that they more or less got what they wanted, but it wasn’t always through their own actions. Israel is weaker than ever and more isolated, secular despots like Mubarak, Qaddafi and Assad are either gone or in danger of falling (though their big target is the Saudis and they seem relatively secure), and the US economy is in shambles, though again that had little to do with them. AQ also snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Anbar by treating the Iraqis so horribly. People talk about how they’re close to defeat, and everything seems to suggest that they are, but really they already got more than they ever could have imagined in the past 10 years.
Triassic Sands
But relatively few of those have been American lives.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Has anyone been alarmed at the fetishization of the military? And you know who else fomented a fetish of all things militaria…
The Fat Kate Middleton
@Triassic Sands:
From Iragbodycount.org:
Documented civilian deaths from violence
102,416 – 111,93
From http.antiwar.com:
American Deaths
Since war began (3/19/03)
Since “Mission Accomplished” (5/1/03) (the list)
4335
3421
Since Handover (6/29/04): 3615 2896
Since Obama Inauguration (1/20/09): 246 125
Since Operation New Dawn: 46 35
American Wounded Official Estimated
Total Wounded: 33143 Over 100000
The Fat Kate Middleton
God … just cannot copy and paste this stuff properly: the comparison is this-
Irag deaths – 102,416 to 111,930 as compared to American deaths, which total 4635.
Each is cause for tears … and I am going to now creep off and never try to post in this way again.
Kane
@El Tiburon:
It matters a great deal to us because as the Arab World comes to understand the power and effectiveness of civil resistance in such things as demonstrations, strikes, marches, political rallies, voting, and the use of social media to organize communities and empower individuals, the less likely they are to buy into the message of Al-Qaeda and their extremist methods.
That’s not only good for their individual countries and the prospect of peace throughout the region, it’s also good for us as well as it diminishes the likelihood of neverending wars and constant threats of attacks.
The Spy Who Loved Me
Why is there a Romney for President Ad at the top of the front page? Man, I thought Pamela Anderson’s tit ad was bad…..
Mike in NC
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
Sickening, indeed, and I say that as someone who spent 30 years in the Navy (1980-2010).
Samara Morgan
great post Dr. Levenson.
and what are we getting for our 14.3 trillion dollars?
the undying enmity of dar ul Islam.
we built the reavers that are going to plague our waking nightmare for the next decade.
and OBL showed the hacktivists the key to our destruction. Paranoia induction.
if we left A-stan and Iraq TODAY we could entirely fund Obamas jobs program.
Might as well, because we are getting FUCKING NOTHING for the all blood and treasure we poured out in paranoia reflex.
im ashamed to be American.
we are all just American trash.
Samara Morgan
and dont fucking tell me to love it or leave it.
cuz we’re taking it back.
one brown baby at a time.
Samara Morgan
@Kane: you retard…..western interventionism CAUSES islamic terrorism.
its in the Quran, proportional response to the Proselytizers.
the more we meddle, the more islamic terrorists we create.
Montysano
I was listening to NPR and heard that police/security forces in NYC were “conducting an intensive program of random searches”in anticipation of 9/11/11.
Self awareness: we don’t haz it.
Katie5
ugh! Rationality! You simply cannot use logic or numbers or cost-benefit analyses to understand this. Go to a fly over state (apologies to all those straw men out there) and ask people if they think the enhanced security state is worth it. They’ll say unequivocally, yes. You can’t throw numbers at them–well, look at the opportunity costs, blah, blah, blah. They’ll accuse you of being a Islamicist sympathizer. Or a Democrat.
Times like these, I’m reminded of the wonderful book, The Authoritarians, on authoritarian followers. You can’t use numbers on these guys; you have to appeal to core values like loyalty and tribalism. How you do that in this case, I’m not sure. But you have to find some way to frame this in a way that the “patriots” can internalize.
Samara Morgan
@fuzz:
that is bulshytt propaganda. the “Anbar Awakening” was payola.
we PAID the Sons of Iraq. when the paychecks stopped, they started right in again.
its not possible to stamp out al-Qaeda, or chop the head off the snake.
we have made 5 million potential snakes in Iraq alone.
And the surge was never anything but cover to GTFO of the cities. and the Iraqis made a national holiday on the day that happened.
you prolly believe Saddam neglected his infrastructure and it just fell down when we walked past it.
::snort::
we shock and awed the shit out of the power grid and municipal services.
the only thing we didnt level was the oil production facilities and oil pipelines.
Samara Morgan
and dont put the blame all on bush and cheney….you all wanted it too.
you wanted REVENGE. and you wanted the vindication of missionary democracy and western culture.
/spit
El Cid
This is the only way which could save 3,000 American lives.
Katie5
BJ or wordpress ate my comment.
ugh–continues to eat it. Wonder if it has something to do with mixing a link in with non HTML tagged text.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Don’t project your guilt over supporting the invasion onto those of us who never wanted it to happen. So step the fuck back and get some perspective, you obnoxious little shit.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Nope. I didn’t support that war and I am tired of assholes who did and now “see the light” claiming some high and mighty status.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Cole has done a lot of mea culpas, and, more importantly, he often (jokingly) points out that as a supporter of that war and that administration, his judgment may be suspect. There are times, though, for example, during his Libya rants that his background comes to mind. I am all in favor of people coming over from the right to the left and I don’t claim superiority for having been over here first. I do, however, get annoyed at times by the fervency of the converts. Maybe as a lifelong denizen of the left, I simply feel more comfortable with a few apostasies here and there.
fuzz
@efgoldman:
You’re right, I meant more from their side of things over in the MENA. They’ve said their main goal all along was to get rid of despotic Arab regimes and that 9/11 would hopefully collapse our economy. The housing crisis collapsed our economy but they didn’t have much to do with that. A kid who set himself on fire in Tunisia did more to bring down Ben Ali, Qaddafi and Mubarak than they did. Their goals were achieved but they did very little in actually accomplishing them. The torture issues were (like the Iraq invasion) really just a gift and a recruiting coup that I’m sure even they didn’t anticipate, I think OBL even said so in one of his tapes.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I know, but I still can find it annoying.
fuzz
@Samara Morgan:
You’re wrong, read about Shiek Sattar, and the tribe called the Mahals who were out by the Syrian border. They came to us first. We also have stopped paying them and they haven’t gone back to the insurgency, the violence in Anbar isn’t even close to what it was from 03-08.
::::::snort::::::
Jebediah
@Samara Morgan:
I did? Just how the fuck do you know what I wanted?
Anne Laurie
@Samara Morgan:
From where comes this “we”, white (aging) girl?
You are not a “brown baby”. You are not the mother, or potential mother, of any proud sharia-law “brown babies”. You’re the Jungian shadow-partner of Sharron Angles, trying to disguise yourself as an Exotic Dusky Maiden so that the vast non-WEC hordes of your fevered imagination will take pity on your wannabe arse when Tha Reevolution comes. (Which it must! If not tomorrow, then surely before you’re too old to pass for harem bait!) But — as smarter, more experienced people keep trying to tell you — the non-WEC Muslim fanatics you dream about would have no more use for you than they would for Pamela Gellar. Cudlip.
If you were interested in “bringing the revolution”, or even cheerleading others engaged in such bringing, you wouldn’t have so much time to hang around here trying to gin up a flag-team camp-war between Balloon Juice and the libertarians. But you’ve got such low self-esteem, you’re “happier” inflicting low-level misery here than attempting to do anything constructive… anywhere.
Yutsano
@Anne Laurie: Ouch. I hope you enjoy that new target on your back. :)
THE
Who but America could create a tribute like this?
Samara Morgan
@Anne Laurie: oh yeah?
every. single. one. of. you. from aimai to em hauser to AWS to you your very fucking pagan self deplores shariah and covering and wants to bring jeebus humper democracy and womans rights to our po’ lil man-oppressed shariah ridden brown sistahs.
fuck you all.
it cant be done.
10 years and 14.3 trillion dollahs later Iraq is still 97% muslim and A-stan is still 99% muslim.
i was home sick yest and the terebi was all girls schools and female pilots in A-stan and how much better life is for afghan women (the ones that are still alive i guess) with ZERO coverage of the Arab Spring advancing on Iraq and our puppet Maliki’s impending doom.
America spent 14.3 trillion dollars FOR FUCKING NOTHING. We arent safer. We made NO converts to missionary democray, American influence is reduced. Peaceful Democracy Theory, the Bush Doctrine/COIN and Pax Americana are epic fails.
And Assange and the hactivists learned paranoia induction from OBL and al-Q.
so make your fucking kumbayah BJ alliance with the glibertarians.
but bend over deep cuz here they come again.
cudlips.
/spit
Samara Morgan
@Anne Laurie:
and there it is…pure unadulterated white colonialism.
you know nothing about shariah and al-Islam except what the white christian nativists and christian triumphalists have told you.
and you drank the feedlot drench, you stupid cow.
harem bait?
wallah.
Samara Morgan
I dont recognize this America…..we are living in fucking Brazil.
Samara Morgan
@Anne Laurie: what does it matter to you if i am white or brown or purple with green spots?
what i say is true.
America spent 14.3 trillion dollahs to make more islamic terrorists and zero converts to missionary democracy.
In 20 years one out of four humans on the planet will be muslim.
And most of them wont liek america very much.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
Let me tell you what will happen in Iraq.
Either there will be peace, and the oil will get out, in which case USA has no reason to stay.
Or there will be internecine war. In which case, the Saudis will fund the Sunnis and the Iranians will fund the Shi’a and the Great Powers will sell guns to both sides.
And it will be like the Iran-Iraq war all over again — Recycling petrodollars for the greater glory of the Military-Industrial Complex
Not me. I don’t want to bring democracy.
I am very non-political.
I want to bring secularism.
Making the world safe for atheism.
Not by America.
That’s why we must let China deal with the Muslim world.
They will soon anyway; By the 2020’s, China will be the largest oil consumer.
China is the biggest investor in Iraq as well as Iran. Let China worry about it.
Trust the CPC. They are not democrats, but they can be trusted to be secular. More than the conservatives in USA.
Samara Morgan
@Anne Laurie: i liek this model, so i’ll repeat it.
Bush and Cheney paved the road to hell with your good intentions. Because even if you were against OIF you were all still cheerleaders for “emancipating” our muslim sistahs from the horrors of shariah.
and you still are.
fucking colonialist monsters.
Samara Morgan
@THE: look Spock.
the “freed” market just doesnt work for America anymore.
we have exhausted it.
China is the new economic America. And al-Islam is the reef that wrecked American economic hegemony, which is the topic of this post.
Samara Morgan
@THE:
yeah, i believed that shit from razib at first too. you dont, and neither does he. You are both proselytizers of atheism, evangelists of atheism. you want to make everyone into atheists.
it cant be done.
man cannot acquire what he cannot use.
everyone is what they should be, what they can be.
if the Real intended you to be something else, it would appear in your path.
THE
I don’t agree with that, US economic hegemony is doing fine.
I am quite content with US recovery. Slow but steady.
You do not see what I see.
Right now it is the Eurozone that is flirting with the final doom.
Samara Morgan
@THE: we spent 14.3 trillion for nothing.
how do you write that off?
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan:
@Samara Morgan:
You can read minds? There is a wider range of thought and belief in the world than you seem capable of recognizing. Not everyone approaches the world with your brand of savage fanaticism. Some are quite comfortable with this idea that different individuals and different cultures have different values. You might learn something from people like that, but I doubt you have that capacity. Have a nice weekend.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
I am way more radical than Razib. He is an accomodationist compared to me.
There is a place in my world for religion – a place even in science.
Unfortunately it is in the Museum of Archeology.
And I am not an evangelist for atheism. I predict its ultimate victory, that’s all.
I even concede it may even be wrong, which is to say that God may exist, but I still think we have no need to believe in it.
If God is a scientific truth then science will find it.
This is a prediction of Monism.
You are not just a theist you are also a dualist.
So for you something can be true yet beyond science.
For me that is absurd. There is only one reality and Science is its Tao.
Samara Morgan
@THE: Let me tell you what will happen in Iraq.
no, let me tell you. Iraq, Syria and Iran will form the new shi’ia crescent. Qom and Karbala will become one.
the Gaza blockade will fall, and Israeli/American power will be be diminished.
The Sauds will create a standing army. Palestine will become a state.
Egypt, Libya, Palestine, Bahrain, Yemen, etc will become islamic democracies or islamic republics, with Saud eventually following suit.
The loosely affiliated United States of MENA.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
It is spent already. * Poof *
There I just wrote it off.
The deficit anxiety is bullshit.
Nations with sovereign currencies cannot be forced to default.
They have printing presses.
This is the understanding of Modern Monetary Theory.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: if the shoe fits wear it, Omnes.
AL is obviously a colonialist. I have heard the same crap here from aimai, from Em Hauser, from AWS, from more people than i can count. Bush/Cheney leveraged their do-gooder fuckery into support for immoral, unwinnable, unjustifiable wars.
harem bait?
plz. AL is a JAFI like Kain and Jennifer Rubin.
Samara Morgan
@THE: LOL
you are magick indeed.
but we still have to pay the bill.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
This is not a decision the USA will make.
This is not a decision MENA will make.
This is a decision the next superpower will make.
You need to ask this guy. He or his successors will decide the shape of the coming century.
THE
Bills are always paid out of current income.
The wars were paid out of current income.
USA has never paid off its national debt. Not in 200 years.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan:
Bullshit, some may have seen it as being given lemons and then making lemonade, but you are ignoring the large number of people who saw OIF as a horrific mistake and then watched in disgust and anger as the Bush Administration rushed from one stupid, venal mistake to another. Don’t paint everyone as willingly complicit. Finally, and then I am going away for the weekend, you do realize that by choosing to post comments here and by interacting with everyone else, you have actually chosen to be a part of the the “community” here. An unpleasant, mean-spirited, and unattractive part, but, nevertheless, a part. Think about that a little.
Bill Arnold
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I’d have to see some evidence of this. More plausibly, it became immediately clear (it was to me at least in the first week or so) that for less than $100 thousand in expenses AQ managed somewhere between $100 and $1000 billion in economic damage. (The Iraq war was an unexpected huge additional damage to the U.S. economy.) And AQ noticed this and started bragging about their ability to do economic damage on the cheap using martyrs, with a expense to damage ratio of over a million.
Bill Arnold
@Bill Arnold:
I meant to type damage to expense ratio. Need better before-coffee proofreading skills.
Samara Morgan
@Bill Arnold: truedat.
and you know who else watched and learned?
Bill Arnold
@Omnes Omnibus:
I was in a similar position. Supported some sort of limited intervention in Afghanistan (AQ was paying rent to the Taliban basically), followed by relentless massive scale non-military aid. (which didn’t happen.) Could not comprehend why the U.S. was so crazy about invading Iraq. Complained many times that I wouldn’t be able to explain it to grandchildren decades from now (then) as anything but crazy. Did not fight it much, mainly because the GWBush administration seemed completely impervious to public opinion.
Yes, collectively, Americans were in support of OIF, at least initially. Without the sales job by the GWBush administration there is no way supporters of OIF would have been anywhere close to a majority.
Samara Morgan
@Bill Arnold: Paranoia Induction 101.
Samara Morgan
@Bill Arnold:
Bush sold Peaceful Democracy Theory and the Bush Doctrine/COIN.
America was preprogrammed to believe in that…its western culture EVANGELISM.
does anyone here actually NOT think western “freedumbs” would be better for muslims?
even Khalid is a western culture chauvinist.
but where America fucked up is that al-Islam is IMMUNE to evangelism and proselytizing in situ.
THE
@Samara Morgan:
Me I don’t believe it.
They desperately need secularism and a science and modern reason-based worldview. China was in the same position early 20th century. They put in power a radical Communist party.
The CPC staged a massive cultural revolution that destroyed the monasteries, put the monks to work in the fields, worked most of them to death. The survivors were allowed to continue their religion, but under strict Party control.
Meanwhile the population was subjected to intense 20th century scientific socia1ist education.
By 1979 Chinese young people had gone from medieval feudal mindset to modern 20th century mindset. Deng Hsio Ping let economic freedom loose. The 30 year boom is the result. 10% per annum. The fastest economic development in history.
No democracy — just science, reason, secularism, socia1ism.