Did al Qaeda actually win?
The United States has spent something just short of $8 trillion on security (military, homeland security and Iraq and Afghanistan) since 2001. The increase in the deficit during that period? About $8.2 trillion.
Factor in the Wall Street/Bank bailout a few years ago and spending for every thing else actually went down.
Gotta watch those welfare moms, the lazy unemployed, shiftless Medicaid recipients and illegal aliens sucking up all our tax dollars.
4 comments:
I don't think you could say they "won."
But what they did do was either turn us into, or reveal us to be, something awful; and they have to feel very smug and satisfied about that.
As one who isn't really a true pacifist but is and has always been, against the involvement by our country in Afghanistan and a few other parts of the world as well, your post today really spoke to me about our current economic status and who/what to blame for the bulk of it and our problems! I think I also do agree with Thomas and his thoughts on whether they won or not too. Frankly, I frequently have moments when I think of all the money we spend doing what we call "helping" others to develop a system that is a clone of ours (or trying to force a reasonable comparison to that anyway) and the end result, more often that not is that those countries, those people, hate us! And I think then, why bother? Why not just stop doing that, spending millions to develop more jealousy, more hatred? And then I think hmmm, to do that would also probably put is in the same general situation we were in just prior to WW2, when so many of our government official were touting that we should remain away from, out of, "meddling" in other countries affairs. At times, I do kind of like that idea. Of course, then we get hated too because we wouldn't be willing to help others. Makes you wonder if there is any win-win place.
Yes. And not just because of the spending. That was just political cowardice -- a willingness to put American troops in harm's way but an unwillingness to require Americans to pay for their foreign adventures. Where are the modern War Bonds?
Al Qaeda wins win every day in every airport and office building where we are subjected to mostly meaningless, but nonetheless bothersome, and occasionally downright intrusive, security screening. They won when we lost the right to enter Canada or Mexico without passports. They won when Abu Gharib happened. They won when we started parsing about whether waterboarding was, or wasn't, really "torture."
Al Qaeda will continue to win every time we fill up the ol' SUV -- or even the Prius -- with unleaded.
And they won't be defeated until we come up with a realistic gasoline substitute that we can make here in the USA and market to the world -- cutting off their money and rendering them irrelevant.
I'm not holding my breath.
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