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I'm not saying your conclusion isn't wrong, but your argument probably is - largely because there are many costs of terrorism beyond simply loss of life - it's

by CHY872 12y ago

I'm not saying your conclusion isn't wrong, but your argument probably is - largely because there are many costs of terrorism beyond simply loss of life - it's an incredibly efficient way to disrupt a nation. For example, some estimates of the cost of 9/11 (I think including the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan) suggest that each American is out to the tune of $10,000 [0]. If the NSA were able to prevent one 9/11 style event, they'd in one step justify their budget for 300 years (if you ignore Iraq and Afghanistan, it goes down to 75 years, but in many ways at least Afghanistan was very much caused by 9/11). [0] - http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-reckoning/cost-graphic.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-rec...

yesbabyyes 12y ago
I'm not saying your conclusion isn't wrong, but your argument probably is I'm not saying that wasn't a bad play of words. You may be willing to give up your liberty, but I, and many with me, are not. Terrorists are trolls; dear people of US and the world, please stop feeding them. The same goes for war mongers of all stripes.
eyeface 12y ago
Fair, but there have to be some diminishing returns there. If there had been two 9/11 style events in short succession, would we have gone to twice as many wars?
- burke 12y ago
  We didn't really go to war because of 9/11. It was a direct result of existing interventionist foreign policy. 9/11 just escalated an ongoing conflict. You're right, though, the impact of each successive event is less.
Zigurd 12y ago
> it's an incredibly efficient way to disrupt a nation. Only if a nation builds a domestic spy program, and intrusive and expensive domestic security apparatus, and starts multi-trillion dollar wars in places that say Graveyard of Empires right on the label. Who would be such idiots?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- LLWM 12y ago
  Well, the fact is that we are such idiots, and it's easier to stop terrorist attacks than to change that.
  - kazagistar 12y ago
    I see no evidence of this. The "ease of stopping terrorist attacks" seems entirely fabricated.
    - LLWM 12y ago
      Regardless of how hard it is, it's still easier than making the entire population of the US immune to fear.
tessierashpool 12y ago
that's not really the cost of the terrorism, though. that's the cost of the cowardly, panicked response. other countries have responded to terrorism with more dignity and poise, and it's cost them less money.
- LLWM 12y ago
  Preventing the cowardly, panicked response isn't the NSA's department. All they can do is try to prevent the attack.
  - tessierashpool 12y ago
    They could also comply with the law, especially important laws like the Fourth Amendment. That's another option they have. edit: it's occurred to me there's a huge flaw in this claim: Preventing the cowardly, panicked response isn't the NSA's department. The NSA has lied about the effectiveness of its mass data collection, claiming that it foiled terrorist plots. The claims don't actually hold up under investigation. But in the process of exaggerating the effectiveness of this particular alleged solution to terrorist danger, they also exaggerated the pervasiveness of that danger, which probably did make the panicked, cowardly response in question both more panicked and more cowardly.
    - LLWM 12y ago
      Come on, even comedians know better than to think they are actually breaking any laws. Why take that risk when you can just legalize whatever you want to do without telling anyone?
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Other developed country have arguably not suffered a proportional injury from terrorism (in terms of deaths per capita per incident). The nearest example I can think of is Norway's massacre carried out y Anders Brievik, and it's questionable as to whether an atrocity by an individual actor meets the operational definition of terrorism, since the threat of future attacks could be neutralized by the capture of a single individual; 'terror' surely implies a non-zero risk of future attack, as opposed to the 'horror' of a previous one that has a zero probability of being repeated.
jacquesm 12y ago
You can't really blame the terrorists for the response. Spain, France, Norway and Germany have all dealt with terrorism over the last decades and not a single one of them has invaded other countries in response to such an attack. And to say that Afghanistan was caused by 9/11 is a total reversal of what actually happened, 9/11 happened because of CIA involvement in Afghanistan.
- virtue3 12y ago
  So many people fail to realize your last point. The reason Osama bin Laden wore that united states military jacket is because it was given to him during the CIA armament of the afghanis against the russians...
- CHY872 12y ago
  Clearly different circumstances however Spain, France, Germany, Norway all invaded Afghanistan, and Spain and Norway also invaded Iraq. Perhaps not as a direct response, though. To your second point, it's clearly a very complicated blame game, but trying to distill it down to fit your own point is not helpful. We can easily follow the chain of events backwards - for example had the USSR not invaded Afghanistan, this might have all been avoided. Certainly the trigger point was the Taliban refusing to hand over Bin Laden, thus providing a safe haven for him and other like minded folk. This all seems to be besides my original point, which was that terror attacks clearly cost far more than the lives of the people killed, and so arguing that the benefit of the NSA is minimal by considering only a tiny fragment of its potential benefit is fallacious.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    > and so arguing that the benefit of the NSA is minimal by considering only a tiny fragment of its potential benefit is fallacious. It's indeed fallacious because there is no benefit of the NSA at all - its current activities are the very cost of 9/11 attacks. Civilian deaths are not the goal of a terror attack, they're just collateral damage, means to an end. The goal of an attack is to, as you wrote, "disrupt a nation" - which is not something that the bombs do, it's something that the nation does to itself by having a crazy overreaction.
nodata 12y ago
Yeah I think you can argue those are the costs of bad policy or reaction, not the attack. How many people could have been saved from heart disease with the same amount of money?
- CHY872 12y ago
  That's not the NSA's problem, though. By all means criticise the US as a whole for that. I'm less in agreement with your second point - you can easily apply it to any slightly frivolous spending. If petrol usage efficiency in the US went up by 10% for example (should be easily achievable for not much cost), in principle the money saved overall would be over $10 billion in 2014. That'd save a lot of lives, too.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
> it's an incredibly efficient way to disrupt a nation As other commenters pointed out, it's only efficient at disrupting a nation if the nation itself decides to disrupt itself. The right way to react to a terrorist attack is to ignore it. Simple as that. You chase the perpetrators like ordinary members of an organized crime group. Anything above that is achieving the terrorists' plan. All the money America spends on "War on Terror", including NSA, is actually the cost of 9/11. If the US wanted to really effectively prevent further terrorist attacks, it would defund the NSA. Right now all that counterterrorism measures are only actively inviting further attacks - everyone can see that it takes only a bunch of civilian casualties to make the nation go completely nuts and drive itself to destruction.
- TezzellEnt 12y ago
  http://www.opencongress.org/vote/2013/h/412 http://www.opencongress.org/vote/2013/h/412 looks like it was a relatively close fail to pass the amendment to prohibit this type collection.
chrismcb 12y ago
You are comparing an intangible number to a different tangible number, but ignoring the intangible side of the second number. What is the intangible costs to Americans for TSA's security theater? Lost time, lost items, lost privacy, lost security, even lost lives?

by CHY872 12y ago

yesbabyyes 12y ago

I'm not saying your conclusion isn't wrong, but your argument probably is I'm not saying that wasn't a bad play of words. You may be willing to give up your liberty, but I, and many with me, are not. Terrorists are trolls; dear people of US and the world, please stop feeding them. The same goes for war mongers of all stripes.

eyeface 12y ago

Fair, but there have to be some diminishing returns there. If there had been two 9/11 style events in short succession, would we have gone to twice as many wars?

burke 12y ago
We didn't really go to war because of 9/11. It was a direct result of existing interventionist foreign policy. 9/11 just escalated an ongoing conflict. You're right, though, the impact of each successive event is less.

Zigurd 12y ago

> it's an incredibly efficient way to disrupt a nation. Only if a nation builds a domestic spy program, and intrusive and expensive domestic security apparatus, and starts multi-trillion dollar wars in places that say Graveyard of Empires right on the label. Who would be such idiots?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
LLWM 12y ago
Well, the fact is that we are such idiots, and it's easier to stop terrorist attacks than to change that.
- kazagistar 12y ago
  I see no evidence of this. The "ease of stopping terrorist attacks" seems entirely fabricated.
  - LLWM 12y ago
    Regardless of how hard it is, it's still easier than making the entire population of the US immune to fear.

tessierashpool 12y ago

that's not really the cost of the terrorism, though. that's the cost of the cowardly, panicked response. other countries have responded to terrorism with more dignity and poise, and it's cost them less money.

LLWM 12y ago
Preventing the cowardly, panicked response isn't the NSA's department. All they can do is try to prevent the attack.
- tessierashpool 12y ago
  They could also comply with the law, especially important laws like the Fourth Amendment. That's another option they have. edit: it's occurred to me there's a huge flaw in this claim: Preventing the cowardly, panicked response isn't the NSA's department. The NSA has lied about the effectiveness of its mass data collection, claiming that it foiled terrorist plots. The claims don't actually hold up under investigation. But in the process of exaggerating the effectiveness of this particular alleged solution to terrorist danger, they also exaggerated the pervasiveness of that danger, which probably did make the panicked, cowardly response in question both more panicked and more cowardly.
  - LLWM 12y ago
    Come on, even comedians know better than to think they are actually breaking any laws. Why take that risk when you can just legalize whatever you want to do without telling anyone?
anigbrowl 12y ago
Other developed country have arguably not suffered a proportional injury from terrorism (in terms of deaths per capita per incident). The nearest example I can think of is Norway's massacre carried out y Anders Brievik, and it's questionable as to whether an atrocity by an individual actor meets the operational definition of terrorism, since the threat of future attacks could be neutralized by the capture of a single individual; 'terror' surely implies a non-zero risk of future attack, as opposed to the 'horror' of a previous one that has a zero probability of being repeated.

jacquesm 12y ago

You can't really blame the terrorists for the response. Spain, France, Norway and Germany have all dealt with terrorism over the last decades and not a single one of them has invaded other countries in response to such an attack. And to say that Afghanistan was caused by 9/11 is a total reversal of what actually happened, 9/11 happened because of CIA involvement in Afghanistan.

virtue3 12y ago
So many people fail to realize your last point. The reason Osama bin Laden wore that united states military jacket is because it was given to him during the CIA armament of the afghanis against the russians...
CHY872 12y ago
Clearly different circumstances however Spain, France, Germany, Norway all invaded Afghanistan, and Spain and Norway also invaded Iraq. Perhaps not as a direct response, though. To your second point, it's clearly a very complicated blame game, but trying to distill it down to fit your own point is not helpful. We can easily follow the chain of events backwards - for example had the USSR not invaded Afghanistan, this might have all been avoided. Certainly the trigger point was the Taliban refusing to hand over Bin Laden, thus providing a safe haven for him and other like minded folk. This all seems to be besides my original point, which was that terror attacks clearly cost far more than the lives of the people killed, and so arguing that the benefit of the NSA is minimal by considering only a tiny fragment of its potential benefit is fallacious.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > and so arguing that the benefit of the NSA is minimal by considering only a tiny fragment of its potential benefit is fallacious. It's indeed fallacious because there is no benefit of the NSA at all - its current activities are the very cost of 9/11 attacks. Civilian deaths are not the goal of a terror attack, they're just collateral damage, means to an end. The goal of an attack is to, as you wrote, "disrupt a nation" - which is not something that the bombs do, it's something that the nation does to itself by having a crazy overreaction.

nodata 12y ago

Yeah I think you can argue those are the costs of bad policy or reaction, not the attack. How many people could have been saved from heart disease with the same amount of money?

CHY872 12y ago
That's not the NSA's problem, though. By all means criticise the US as a whole for that. I'm less in agreement with your second point - you can easily apply it to any slightly frivolous spending. If petrol usage efficiency in the US went up by 10% for example (should be easily achievable for not much cost), in principle the money saved overall would be over $10 billion in 2014. That'd save a lot of lives, too.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

> it's an incredibly efficient way to disrupt a nation As other commenters pointed out, it's only efficient at disrupting a nation if the nation itself decides to disrupt itself. The right way to react to a terrorist attack is to ignore it. Simple as that. You chase the perpetrators like ordinary members of an organized crime group. Anything above that is achieving the terrorists' plan. All the money America spends on "War on Terror", including NSA, is actually the cost of 9/11. If the US wanted to really effectively prevent further terrorist attacks, it would defund the NSA. Right now all that counterterrorism measures are only actively inviting further attacks - everyone can see that it takes only a bunch of civilian casualties to make the nation go completely nuts and drive itself to destruction.

TezzellEnt 12y ago
http://www.opencongress.org/vote/2013/h/412 http://www.opencongress.org/vote/2013/h/412 looks like it was a relatively close fail to pass the amendment to prohibit this type collection.

chrismcb 12y ago

You are comparing an intangible number to a different tangible number, but ignoring the intangible side of the second number. What is the intangible costs to Americans for TSA's security theater? Lost time, lost items, lost privacy, lost security, even lost lives?