How to Spend $144bn to Make Us Safer
We will have spent $144bn in Iraq by the end of this year in an attempt to make the US safer from terrorists.
The NY Times has an Op-Chart this morning on how we might have spent that $144bn on other ways to make us all safer.
Go look at the chart. Boy would I have loved to have spent the money another way.
While I agree that a different approach to battling terrorism would probably have been preferable to the war in Iraq, I'm not sure I agree with those offered by the NY Times chart. Most of these "solutions" are far too tech-centric and threat-specific to be feasible. $10 billion to protect airlines from shoulder-fired missiles? Please. More boats for the coast guard? Gimme a break. While I certainly support more money for the police and putting money into the armed forces (after all, if we say they're heroes, why are they being paid like chumps?), I think we have to re-think our approach to this problem.
The next attack by the terrorists will evade every countermeasure we put in place - a motivated enemy always finds a way. Hence, the solution needs to focus on removing that motivation. The seeds for terrorism are sown in poverty and lack of education - if you were dirt poor, desperate to escape your circumstances, had little education, and someone showed up offering to take care of you, give you money, and promised you a better world in the afterlife, what would you do?
The problem is that these variety of solutions take time. A long time. And we're too impatient for our own good to see them through. Instead, we want more soldiers, more tech, bigger guns. Sure, we do need some of those things - we can't make ourselves an easy target in the interim while the other solutions are attempted, but I think there needs to be a bigger priority on the long-term programs than the knee-jerk "security theater" solutions that top the NY Times' list. It's the things at the bottom of the list that seem to be more important for reaching a positive conclusion in the "war on terror".
Posted by: Brendon J. Wilson | August 08, 2004 at 10:23 PM
I agree with Brendon, the answer lies in the cause.
Posted by: Jackson | August 09, 2004 at 10:22 AM
I couldn't find the link. What were the recommending, an expanded state department, CIA, and gucci handbags for those still traumatized by 9/11?
Posted by: Fred Schoeneman | August 10, 2004 at 09:50 AM