4 ms·

The premise is completely off. If the author actually compared the totality of the impact of 9/11 on the country, instead of just comparing the number of people

The premise is completely off. If the author actually compared the totality of the impact of 9/11 on the country, instead of just comparing the number of people who die each year to various diseases, they would surely see the importance of fighting terrorism. Just some facts: http://www.iags.org/costof911.html http://www.iags.org/costof911.html - The destruction of major buildings in the World Trade Center with a replacement cost of from $3 billion to $4.5 billion. - Property and infrastructure damage: $10 billion to $13 -billion. - Federal emergency funds (heightened airport security, sky marshals, government takeover of airport security, retrofitting aircraft with anti-terrorist devices, cost of operations in Afghanistan): $40 billion. - Direct job losses amounted to 83,000, with $17 billion in lost wages. - Losses to the city of New York (lost jobs, lost taxes, damage to infrastructure, cleaning): $95 billion. - Fall of global markets: incalculable. Keep in mind the reason terror attacks have been successful here is that the terrorists use our own laws against us in order to gain an advantage. The lax immigration laws allowed many of the 9/11 hijackers to set up shop here. Keep in mind a large number of illegal immigrants being stopped at our southern border are middle eastern: http://www.wnd.com/2010/05/156441/ http://www.wnd.com/2010/05/156441/ "A 2006 congressional report on border threats, titled “A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border” and prepared by the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations, indicated that 1.2 million illegal aliens were apprehended in 2005 alone, and 165,000 of those were from countries other than Mexico. Approximately 650 were from “special interest countries,” or nations the Border Patrol defines as “designated by the intelligence community as countries that could export individuals that could bring harm to our country in the way of terrorism.” It's a tough balancing act. You don't want to give the bad guys an advantage, but when you keep the laws relaxed and reduce the amount of money being spent on this, all you do is play into the hands of the people who want to kill Americans.

hotpockets 13y ago
Ever heard of the economic impact of chronic disease? Its in the trillions per year (CDC, WHO, others). Ever consider the economic value of a human life? Its around $5 million. Since around 50 million people die each year from disease we can estimate the societal burden of disease to be ~$250 trillion dollars per year. If you do an full analysis, I would have a hard time believing you'd find the societal burden of terrorism is greater than the detrimental impact of disease.
- greeneggs 13y ago
  There are several flaws in your argument. US agencies place a $5-10 million value on an American life [1]. This is not the value of a life anywhere, though. For example, part of the valuation comes from discounted earnings calculations, which is lower in lower-income countries. Furthermore, just because problem A is worse than problem B (measured in dollars) doesn't mean we should spend more money fighting problem A. Money should be spent where it has the greatest impact. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/economy/17regulation.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/economy/17regulat...
  - hotpockets 13y ago
    Most people don't make over $1 million dollars in a lifetime. I like to think the value comes from the desire to compensate a family member for a lost loved one. Some manner of putting a dollar value of the pain of the loss. Also the greatest impact of spent dollars comes from investing in knowledge creation since new knowledge benefits everyone who will exist in the future, and we are extremely close (on the earth time scale) to our species becoming effectively permanent (space faring). So any minor new discovery can have enormous benefits, or at least benefits that are many orders of magnitude greater than stopping any number of different terror attacks. You also have biological terrorism to worry about. Both natural (new severe viral outbreaks as in 1918 virus) and man made threats, which are not included in any estimates of the toll of disease.
dkrich 13y ago
- Fall of global markets: incalculable. Really? If you look at the DJIA over the period from mid-September of 2001 on, you will see that the fall lasted all of about one month. Within weeks it rebounded right back where it had been.
gohrt 13y ago
> but when you keep the laws relaxed and reduce the amount of money being spent on this, all you do is play into the hands of the people who want to kill Americans. That is an incredibly unwarranted assumption. Spending less may in fact drastically reduce the threat to Americans. Food for thought: Why do you think people want to come over here and kill Americans, as opposed to people similar to us in other countries? Might it be correlated to the amount of money we spend doing unfriendly things to non-Americans?
- tracker1 13y ago
  Yay! Now we're doing unfriendly things to our own citizens... that should make people feel better about us right?
  - zxcdw 13y ago
    Read again. What you are saying is that "Doing less unfriendly things to non-Americans means doing unfriendly things to Americans." Do you honestly think that way? I'm sure you don't. And I agree with the grandparent here -- there's something which draws US to be the hotspot target for terrorism, and that terrorism originates from certain areas of the world with strong US military presene. Could it be that the best way to avoid the total amount of terrorism on US targets is to actually try to play nice towards non-Americans? Kind of like rest of the western countries like to do apart from US-led operations. Ditch the War on Terror, and fix the problem at the root rather than try to brute-force through it. It is my claim that for some people this solution means "surrendering" and as such a knee-jerk reaction would be to not consider such options. Just imagine he PR failure for the president and congress who would even mentio that "hey, what if we're at fault...".
    - tracker1 13y ago
      Personally, I wouldn't mind a little more return to isolationism... pull out all our foreign troops (outside of embassy protection details), limiting our near-foreign presence to our naval operations (for the most part). I'd also like to see some of the stupidity behind the war on drugs stopped as well.
api 13y ago
The worst thing about terror is the social and cultural effect it has. America swung hard to the theocratic right after 9/11-- ironically the same ideology as the terrorists more or less (except Dominionist Christian instead of Wahhabist Muslim... basically a branding difference).
mikeyouse 13y ago
Seriously, World Net Daily as a source? > Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations, indicated that 1.2 million illegal aliens were apprehended in 2005 alone, and 165,000 of those were from countries other than Mexico. Sounds pretty scary! 165,000 non-Mexicans, I bet there are tens of thousands of terrorists coming this way! > Approximately 650 were from “special interest countries,” or nations the Border Patrol defines as “designated by the intelligence community as countries that could export individuals that could bring harm to our country in the way of terrorism.” Oh. Less than a thousand -- .05% Hmm.. I guess if they were all from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or something, what counts as a 'special interest country'? > Cuba (712), Iran (14), Syria (5) and Sudan (5), as well as Somalia (9), Afghanistan (9), Pakistan (37), Saudi Arabia (5) and Yemen (11). So when you said: "Keep in mind a large number of illegal immigrants being stopped at our southern border are middle eastern" You really meant, out of 1.2 million stopped, approximately 50 or 60 were middle-eastern.
tracker1 13y ago
Don't you mean illegal immigrants not being stopped at our southern border... in the line of tens of thousands a day crossing over?

hotpockets 13y ago

Ever heard of the economic impact of chronic disease? Its in the trillions per year (CDC, WHO, others). Ever consider the economic value of a human life? Its around $5 million. Since around 50 million people die each year from disease we can estimate the societal burden of disease to be ~$250 trillion dollars per year. If you do an full analysis, I would have a hard time believing you'd find the societal burden of terrorism is greater than the detrimental impact of disease.

greeneggs 13y ago
There are several flaws in your argument. US agencies place a $5-10 million value on an American life [1]. This is not the value of a life anywhere, though. For example, part of the valuation comes from discounted earnings calculations, which is lower in lower-income countries. Furthermore, just because problem A is worse than problem B (measured in dollars) doesn't mean we should spend more money fighting problem A. Money should be spent where it has the greatest impact. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/economy/17regulation.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/economy/17regulat...
- hotpockets 13y ago
  Most people don't make over $1 million dollars in a lifetime. I like to think the value comes from the desire to compensate a family member for a lost loved one. Some manner of putting a dollar value of the pain of the loss. Also the greatest impact of spent dollars comes from investing in knowledge creation since new knowledge benefits everyone who will exist in the future, and we are extremely close (on the earth time scale) to our species becoming effectively permanent (space faring). So any minor new discovery can have enormous benefits, or at least benefits that are many orders of magnitude greater than stopping any number of different terror attacks. You also have biological terrorism to worry about. Both natural (new severe viral outbreaks as in 1918 virus) and man made threats, which are not included in any estimates of the toll of disease.

dkrich 13y ago

- Fall of global markets: incalculable. Really? If you look at the DJIA over the period from mid-September of 2001 on, you will see that the fall lasted all of about one month. Within weeks it rebounded right back where it had been.

gohrt 13y ago

> but when you keep the laws relaxed and reduce the amount of money being spent on this, all you do is play into the hands of the people who want to kill Americans. That is an incredibly unwarranted assumption. Spending less may in fact drastically reduce the threat to Americans. Food for thought: Why do you think people want to come over here and kill Americans, as opposed to people similar to us in other countries? Might it be correlated to the amount of money we spend doing unfriendly things to non-Americans?

tracker1 13y ago
Yay! Now we're doing unfriendly things to our own citizens... that should make people feel better about us right?
- zxcdw 13y ago
  Read again. What you are saying is that "Doing less unfriendly things to non-Americans means doing unfriendly things to Americans." Do you honestly think that way? I'm sure you don't. And I agree with the grandparent here -- there's something which draws US to be the hotspot target for terrorism, and that terrorism originates from certain areas of the world with strong US military presene. Could it be that the best way to avoid the total amount of terrorism on US targets is to actually try to play nice towards non-Americans? Kind of like rest of the western countries like to do apart from US-led operations. Ditch the War on Terror, and fix the problem at the root rather than try to brute-force through it. It is my claim that for some people this solution means "surrendering" and as such a knee-jerk reaction would be to not consider such options. Just imagine he PR failure for the president and congress who would even mentio that "hey, what if we're at fault...".
  - tracker1 13y ago
    Personally, I wouldn't mind a little more return to isolationism... pull out all our foreign troops (outside of embassy protection details), limiting our near-foreign presence to our naval operations (for the most part). I'd also like to see some of the stupidity behind the war on drugs stopped as well.

api 13y ago

The worst thing about terror is the social and cultural effect it has. America swung hard to the theocratic right after 9/11-- ironically the same ideology as the terrorists more or less (except Dominionist Christian instead of Wahhabist Muslim... basically a branding difference).

mikeyouse 13y ago

Seriously, World Net Daily as a source? > Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations, indicated that 1.2 million illegal aliens were apprehended in 2005 alone, and 165,000 of those were from countries other than Mexico. Sounds pretty scary! 165,000 non-Mexicans, I bet there are tens of thousands of terrorists coming this way! > Approximately 650 were from “special interest countries,” or nations the Border Patrol defines as “designated by the intelligence community as countries that could export individuals that could bring harm to our country in the way of terrorism.” Oh. Less than a thousand -- .05% Hmm.. I guess if they were all from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or something, what counts as a 'special interest country'? > Cuba (712), Iran (14), Syria (5) and Sudan (5), as well as Somalia (9), Afghanistan (9), Pakistan (37), Saudi Arabia (5) and Yemen (11). So when you said: "Keep in mind a large number of illegal immigrants being stopped at our southern border are middle eastern" You really meant, out of 1.2 million stopped, approximately 50 or 60 were middle-eastern.

tracker1 13y ago

Don't you mean illegal immigrants not being stopped at our southern border... in the line of tens of thousands a day crossing over?