Is the ‘War on Terror’ Irrational?

The “War on Terror”

The phrase “war on terror” was first used in a speech by President George W. Bush while addressing a joint session of Congress following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. According to the President the “…war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” The President states that the war will fought and won by,

“direct[ing] every resource at our command — every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war — to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.”

The President goes on to describe how this “war” will not be like any other, it will be without specific and definitive direction or “swift conclusion,” it will be of indeterminate length against infinitely varied enemies which include other nations that differ with this policy and furthermore, the U.S. will treat as hostile any nation that “harbor[s] or support[s] terrorism.”

Is the “War on Terror” Irrational?

In a fully-functioning democracy every governmental policy, especially those made in reaction to traumatic and horrifically shocking events, must be looked upon with skepticism and analyzed for their cost effectiveness and rationality. In order to analyze whether or not the “war on terror” is in fact irrational we first must define our terms. For our purposes, “irrational is defined as a deprivation of sound judgment. We will define “sound judgment” as a proportional response to a threat or action. For instance, if hypothetically a terrorist strike has the potential to cause $10 billion in economic damages and 1,000 U.S. casualties we will conclude that a terrorist prevention policy which appropriates $250 billion and causes 25,000 in civilian casualties to be wholly irrational and completely lacking in sound judgment. These assumptions will be used as the perspective through which we analyze the U.S. governmental policy of the “war on terror.

The question of whether or not the “war on terror” is irrational can be addressed by understanding the extent of the threat and the likelihood of future attacks. In determining rationality it is of vital importance that we compare how the finite resources of the U.S. have been allocated for the prevention of attacks as related to resource allocations for similarly probable conditions that lead to death, injury and that possess financially destructive capability. Furthermore, it is fundamental in the determination of rationality that we analyze the effectiveness of appropriating resources for the “war on terror” versus the efficacy of apportionment of capital, human or otherwise, toward other analogous conditions and/or threats.

Scope of the Threat

Historical perspective is required in order to get a realistic idea of the scope of the international terrorist threat. It is important to note that when speaking of the “war on terror” the Bush administration’s mission in this regard refers to groups beginning with al Qaeda but including “every terrorist group of global reach.” The duration of the “war” is infinite or at least until every international terrorist organization “has been found, stopped and defeated.” For the purposes of the “war on terror” domestic terrorist groups without international reach will be excluded from this discussion.

Since 1920, citizens and assets of the U.S. have been affected by dozens of terrorist attacks from varied groups both domestically and internationally. The number of international terrorist attacks in 2005 totaled 11,111 and 14,600 people were killed. 8,016 of these incidents resulted in the death, injury or kidnapping of at least one individual. 5,980 of the total number of incidents resulted in 0 deaths. 226 of the total resulted in 10 or more deaths. 2005 was the latest year reporting total casualties and recorded the highest number of fatalities related to terrorism to date.

Prior to 2005, 2004 recorded the highest number of attacks since 1968, when numbers on the subject were 1st recorded. Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq has brought increasingly greater numbers of worldwide terrorist acts it is not surprising that the most significant percentage of terrorist attacks occur in Iraq. The State Department has reported that a total of 56 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks in 2005. Of this total, 47 of these fatalities occurred in Iraq. Prior to the invasion and occupation of Iraq most years saw a few hundred people annually killed in international terrorist attacks.

Historically speaking,

“the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.” (Mueller)

Furthermore and probably the most important testament to the likelihood of a future domestic attack is a formerly secret internal FBI report that contradicts past public pronouncements of both the FBI and the Bush administration in which the FBI concludes that they “have not revealed evidence of concealed cells or networks acting in the homeland as sleepers and “to date, we have not identified any true ’sleeper’ agents in the US.” (Ross)

Analogous Conditions

In 2004 654,092 people died of heart disease. The same year 550,279 died of cancer, 150,147 of stroke, 123,884 from respiratory disease, 108,694 from accidents, 72,815 from diabetes, 65,829 from Alzheimers and 61,472 died from influenza and pneumonia. None of these conditions is even remotely analogous to the very limited numbers of people affected by terrorist acts even in the record years of late. Other than being struck by lighting it is extremely difficult to find acts capable of killing equal numbers of Americans as those attributed to terrorism. In fact, the number of people killed in the U.S. by accidental poisoning (12,757) or by falling (13,322) is far greater than greatest number of people killed in a single year through all terrorist attacks, worldwide.

Very few causes of death equal 2005’s international account for American deaths. One such cause is the number killed in motor vehicle accidents for the District of Columbia (56). Even with 2001 being the deadliest year for Americans killed in terrorist attacks (2,973), the number of people killed in 2000 in motor vehicle accidents in Florida (3,057) surpasses that number.

Resource Allocation

Proportionally speaking the amount of funds appropriated by the U.S. government for the purposes of fighting the “war on terror” far outweigh the disbursement of resources for the purposes of fighting preventable disease or accidents that have and will cause far more casualties in the U.S. in a single year than “terrorism” has caused in its totality. To put this in perspective, the 1998 annual death rate from diabetes was 160,000, 44,000 from breast cancer and 50,000 from AIDS and the costs associated with these diseases were $91 billion for diabetes, $6.6 billion for breast cancer and $10.3 billion for AIDS/HIV. President Clinton’s budget for fiscal year 1999 allocated just $388 million for diabetes research in comparison to the “war on terror,” which President Bush’s allocated close to $80 billion for increased homeland security, military and domestic defense spending as well as $500 billion and counting for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. These numbers do not include what has already been spent on these endeavors pre-9/11.

In order to get the full effect of the dis-proportionality of these budget allocations it must be understood that the single greatest terrorist attack in the history of the world on 9/11 caused $27.2 billion in total economic damages and close to 3,000 lives. Diabetes on the other hand has caused close to 4 times the amount of preventable economic damages and 55 times the amount of human casualties versus “terrorism in 2001 yet was allocated a budget close to 1500 times less than the “war on terror.”

While diabetes is the 6th leading cause of death, heart disease and cancer combine to kill over 1.1 million people in the U.S. alone. Budget cuts and budget requests for funding for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) taken together have accounted for a decrease in $2 billion in President Bush’s latest budget; though the 5 year costs for treating cancer amounted to $1.1 trillion. And while the Bush administration has allocated $38 billion for “Homeland Security it has cut millions in funding for agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Analysis

The policy of the “war on terror is even by the most conservative standards wholly irrational. Resources have been allocated in response to irrational and unfounded fears and without regard to their effectiveness. If the only standard for the effectiveness of the “war on terror is analyzed by its ability to drain resources from much more compelling and cost effective endeavors it should be concluded that its has been a miserable failure. The “war on terror has not only been ineffectively expensive but it has illustrated a catastrophic disaster in the political and civilian leadership of our country by highlighting a vast and seemingly widespread inability to question the prevailing ignorance-guided paradigms.

Conclusion

The U.S. has consumed many of its resources fighting what is in many ways an abstract “war, lacking in definition, direction, purpose and scope. Conceivably it is not only impossible to “win such a war but practically it is also impossible to fight an abstraction. The U.S. must introspectively analyze its irrational fears to overcome what is clearly becoming a historically unprecedented, economically and morally bankrupt counter-productive policy. Even those lacking in rationality and motivated solely by political purposes should be able to discern that complete eradication of “terrorism by the United States is not possible and is certainly not practical. If the U.S. has any chance at affecting change in the world it must clearly and very limitedly define the scope of its reaction to September 11th and clearly delineate how these actions will be directed by a clear and rational standard of behavior. It is imperative that the U.S. has a public discussion whereby previous assumptions and fear driven reactions are challenged and time is given to face the answers to the integral questions that to this point it has failed to ask. Those questions are very simple and some of which have already been addressed in this paper. Whether or not the conclusions reached from this approach differ from those presented here there should be no disagreement that a radical departure from the status quo is absolutely necessary. It should also be clear that the U.S. should approach the challenges it faces logically and rationally. These standards are not only required for the effectiveness of any new policy that arises out of this process but they are an inextricable requirement for the health of our great democracy.

Works Cited/Bibliography

“Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People. United States Capitol. Washington, D.C. September 20, 2001. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/print/20010920-8.html

“A war of attrition. The Lancet Oncology. Current Issue, Volume 8, Number 4, April 2007.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470204507700815/fulltext
“Where do we stand?” Diabetes Care, Volume 21, Number 12, December 1998. Mayer B. Davidson, MD. http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/reprint/21/12/2152.pdf

“A False Sense of Insecurity? John Mueller. Ohio State University. Regulation. Fall 2004. http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv27n3/v27n3-5.pdf

“Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?: The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy. John Mueller.
Foreign Affairs, September/October 2006. http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060901facomment85501-p0/john-mueller/is-there-still-a-terrorist-threat-the-myth-of-the-omnipresent-enemy.html

“Secret FBI Report Questions Al Qaeda Capabilities. Brian Ross. 9 March 2005.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=566425&page=1

“The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11. Amy Belasco. 14 March 2007. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf

“Fear of attacks is real, but irrational. Philip Chard. 2 Oct. 2006. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=507223

“Flying and Driving After the September 11 Attacks. Michael Sivak and Michael J. Flannagan. American Scientist, Volume 91.
http://transportation.northwestern.edu/seminars/03-04/sivak040104/Sivak_flying-and-driving.pdf

“Pakistan’s $4.2 Billion ‘Blank Check’ for U.S. Military Aid After 9/11, funding to country soars with little oversight. Nathaniel Heller, Sarah Fort, Marina Walker Guevara, Ben Welsh. http://www.publicintegrity.org/icij/default.aspx

“Economic Costs to the United States Stemming From the 9/11 Attacks. Robert Looney. Strategic Insights, Volume I, Issue 6. August 2002. http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/aug02/homeland.asp

Dear American Soldier,

I’m writing you this quick note today to tell you what you may already know; that Americans don’t care about you. Even though you are probably well aware of this I know it hurts to absorb the sentiment in the words and for that I’m sorry but for some reason I am inherently bound to tell the truth which probably sounds like insanity to those who have yet to hear it.

You probably came to the conclusion that President Bush doesn’t care a wit about you when he was more than happy to sacrifice you as pawns in his unjustifiable war. You also probably realized that the Republican controlled Congress didn’t care a thing about you when they just went along with whatever Bush wanted and it probably recently struck you that salvation from the quagmire could not be found in the Democratically controlled Congress when they showed that they were more than willing to forsake you and their constitutionally mandated responsibility to check the power’s of the president through the power of the purse that they so easily handed over to the executive branch for partisan political gamesmanship.

When it was that you lost the hearts and minds of the American people I’m not too sure but I think evidence of it has been around since the beginnings of this conflict. You could see it when the minority voices like mine were suddenly thrust into the mainstream and it became clear to most that no weapons of mass destruction were ever going to be found in Iraq and that the President either lied about this fact or was grossly incompetent in not knowing. When people realized that we would never find WMDs questions arose about Iraq’s ties to Al-Qaida. When absolutely no ties were found and that fact was publicized in the mainstream news outlets years after the conflict began and after thousands had already been killed, the American people greeted the news with a grunt and a shrug. It was the same ho-hum reaction that was observed when the 3,000th American soldier was killed (ho) and the 25,000th soldier was wounded (hum). When Iraqis were shown with their ink stained fingers in the air as a sign to Americans to get the hell out of their country the American public’s reaction was again similarly lackluster and obsequious.

Now that the apologist are no longer in the majority and the American people are clearly aware that the President either lied or was maliciously inept and with Congress becoming willfully more irrelevant and impotent, the people still wait for someone else in our democracy to do something about this stupendously horrific quagmire that you, more than anyone else, are squarely faced with. Since we don’t read minds and can merely observe the American people’s inaction aren’t we left to conclude that they just don’t care? Again I’m sorry for saying so but I just wanted you to know that it seems you’re on your own over there. Hopefully God is on your side because it looks like nobody here is. Please do everything within your power to not get killed, injured or maimed and try not to needlessly kill or injure any Iraqis, as doing so will only provoke more violence and as you may already be aware, substantial and effective political reinforcements are not on their way, nor are you going anywhere.

Godspeed,

The Indy Voice

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