Global War on Terror: Is/Was it Worth it?

[elsuper]

GWoT M8? I'd consider the question in the title a separate issue from "Was it successful?" though feel free to talk about that too.

 

I ran across this in a Foreign Policy article by David Altman:

 

Current foreign policy suggests that the United States needs to spend billions of dollars to keep a relatively small number of American people from getting killed. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — forget about all the money spent on intelligence, public security, and costs to private businesses — have cost more than $100 billion a year. What’s the worst that could have happened in the absence of these wars? Even if an attack on the scale of 9/11 had happened every year since 2001, the cost of saving each life would still have been at least $30 million.

 

That amount is far in excess of the $1.8 million, on average, that the families of 9/11 victims received in compensation for their lost loved ones. And the dollar figure doesn’t cover the cost in blood of the roughly 500 American soldiers who have died, on average, each year, and the many more who have been injured and permanently disabled. Nor does it account for the hundreds of thousands of other people who died as a result of American-led wars — but of course, they’re not part of our calculations.

 

I can think of plenty of other ways to spend $30 million that could have saved more than one American life — road safety, community health care, pollution reduction, etc. Even doing nothing on the policy front and just using the money to pay off debt might have been better for Americans. After all, the massive military efforts of the past 14 years may have kept a few thousand living Americans safe, but they probably made the world much less safe for millions of future Americans. The United States now has many more enemies than it did before 9/11, if only judging by the global proliferation of extremist groups that target American citizens and other foreigners Americans care about.

 

 

 

Those numbers are pretty striking. Is it wrong to so coldly calculate on such matters?

[Clarke]

Well the wars weren't about saving lives or protecting people, obviously since more people died as a result and still are. 

[Dolphman]

So this really depends on how much you value (your allies) lives.

[fistofdoom]

I'm not going to spend ten minutes typing up an intelligent reply when I could get just as much enjoyment from using that time to go cook a nice meal.

[Kastor (Old Account)]

The war on terror was an excuse to pass harsh laws to give more power to the government. It was also a front to increase military capabilities, We now have a lot more tech in the weapons field then any other country in the world. 

[Fox Fire]

GWoT M8? I'd consider the question in the title a separate issue from "Was it successful?" though feel free to talk about that too.

 

I ran across this in a Foreign Policy article by David Altman:

 

Those numbers are pretty striking. Is it wrong to so coldly calculate on such matters.

It was the exact opposite of successful. There wasn't a caliphate spreading across the middle east before hand. The invasion of Iraq caused an explosion in popularity of extremist Salifism.

[Vosunda]

Defense companies make a killing off of these wars.

[jaguar]

GWoT M8? I'd consider the question in the title a separate issue from "Was it successful?" though feel free to talk about that too.

 

I ran across this in a Foreign Policy article by David Altman:

 

 

Those numbers are pretty striking. Is it wrong to so coldly calculate on such matters?

But do you really think USA doesn't have interest in doing it?oil?selling weapons to other countries?

And no, it's not worth it if we are talking about ground battles, lots of people would die though I support bombing them from air and firing missiles

[Franz Von Dietrich]

If you're referring to Bush's actions on "War on Terrorism" then no. All it did was create a new radical group called Islamic State, (which would never happen if you had Saddam in power). The whole War of Terrorism will result in no winners.

[Franz Von Dietrich]

Because Saddam was such a great guy, wasn't he?

Better him, than some ISIS freaks beheading and murdering people with genocide.  Saddam kept Iraq stable, and if you try to refute that, then; you're mocking the truth.

[Franz Von Dietrich]

Because some genocidal !@#$ are better than others right?

Would you like me to list all the things Saddam did?

I believe you're drowned in Bush's propaganda. Afterall; he only went to war with his Iraq to finish his Fathers war in the gulf.

[elsuper]

But do you really think USA doesn't have interest in doing it?oil?selling weapons to other countries?

 

As far as oil goes, I've cited it before, but Afghanistan has miniscule oil reserves (source: US Geological Survey), and oil imports from Iraq hit their all-time peak before the invasion, and have never come close since, in fact trending downward. (Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration). If we invaded "for oil," we did a really crappy job of it, because we were getting more oil from them before the war.

 

The military-industrial complex argument is a bit more compelling, but as a special-interest motivation, not a national-interest one.

[Fox Fire]

Defense companies make a killing off of these wars.

Damn right they do.

 

 

Better him, than some ISIS freaks beheading and murdering people with genocide.  Saddam kept Iraq stable, and if you try to refute that, then; you're mocking the truth.

Quoted for truth.

 

 

Because some genocidal !@#$ are better than others right?

Would you like me to list all the things Saddam did?

Go for it. Fact is, Saddam was a stable leader. I'd rather have a tyrant leader than a nation locked in perpetual war.

 

 

*Sigh*

 

The Dujail Massacre of 1982

 

In July of 1982, several Shiite militants attempted to assassinate Saddam Hussein while he was riding through the city. Hussein responded by ordering the slaughter of some 148 residents, including dozens of children.

 

 

The Barzani Clan Abductions of 1983

 

Masoud Barzani led the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), an ethnic Kurdish revolutionary group fighting Baathist oppression. After Barzani cast his lot with the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War, Hussein had some 8,000 members of Barzani's clan, including hundreds of women and children, abducted. It is assumed that most were slaughtered; thousands have been discovered in mass graves in southern Iraq.

 

 

The al-Anfal Campaign

 

The worst human rights abuses of Hussein's tenure took place during the genocidal al-Anfal Campaign (1986-1989), in which Hussein's administration called for the extermination of every living thing--human or animal--in certain regions of the Kurdish north. All told, some 182,000 people--men, women, and children--were slaughtered, many through use of chemical weapons. The Halabja poison gas massacre of 1988 alone killed over 5,000 people.

 

 

The Campaign Against the Marsh Arabs

 

Hussein did not limit his genocide to identifiably Kurdish groups; he also targeted the predominantly Shiite Marsh Arabs of southeastern Iraq, the direct descendants of the ancient Mesopotamians. By destroying more than 95% of the region's marshes, he effectively depleted its food supply and destroyed the entire millennia-old culture, reducing the number of Marsh Arabs from 250,000 to approximately 30,000. It is unknown how much of this population drop can be attributed to direct starvation and how much to migration, but the human cost was unquestionably high.

 

 

The Post-Uprising Massacres of 1991

 

In the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, the United States encouraged Kurds and Shiites to rebel against Hussein's regime--then withdrew and refused to support them, leaving an unknown number to be slaughtered. At one point, Hussein's regime killed as many as 2,000 suspected Kurdish rebels every day. Some two million Kurds hazarded the dangerous trek through the mountains to Iran and Turkey, hundreds of thousands dying in the process.

 

 

 

These are just the ones you can find in a simple search. From multiple sources. From multiple time periods.  

 

There are dozens more of these, but it would take a lot of digging to find. As I have said before, I have a Kurdish friend who currently lives in Iraq and is fighting ISIS outside of Kirkut. His family lived under Saddam's rule. And I have firsthand accounts of some of the atrocities he witnessed as a young boy.

 

Civilians killed in Iraq since the war began.

https://www.iraqbodycount.org/

For a more detailed look, theres a spiffy little graph database.

[Director]

Damn right they do.

 

 

Quoted for truth.

 

 

Go for it. Fact is, Saddam was a stable leader. I'd rather have a tyrant leader than a nation locked in perpetual war.

 

 

 

Civilians killed in Iraq since the war began.

https://www.iraqbodycount.org/

For a more detailed look, theres a spiffy little graph database.

 

Saddam's Iraq wasn't actually super stable after he did his little Kuwait adventure.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_uprisings_in_Iraq

 

If we're going to just count bodies to decide whether or not Saddam was a decent ruler, the deaths from the Iran-Iraq war alone overshadow just about everything that came afterwards. What the US did with Iraq after the invasion was poorly handled, at least in retrospect, but honestly, Saddam wasn't exactly taking the country to nice places.

[Aesir]

You know this whole situation would have been easier if someone told the U.S. you can't declare war on an idea/emotion/state of mind.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Lunan

[Fox Fire]

Looking at this chart, looks like it's mostly the Iraqis you have to blame for Civvie deaths.

That's not the point...

[Desertfalcon]

You know this whole situation would have been easier if someone told the U.S. you can't declare war on an idea/emotion/state of mind.

 

You can declare war on whatever the hell you want, whether it will be succesful is a different story.

 

Also, you can declare war on militant groups and leaders such as Saddam Hussein and win. Problem is figuring what to do after you win so that another enemy doesn't pop up.

[Fox Fire]

Well what about the civilian deaths before the war?

What about the civilian deaths in NK? Nobody cares, because a stable dictator is in power and should the Kim dynasty be removed, it would be utter chaos.

Tyrant dictators > Anarchy

 

On another note, you could try maybe citing the deaths you've pointed out.

[Aisha Greyjoy]

Better him, than some ISIS freaks beheading and murdering people with genocide.  Saddam kept Iraq stable, and if you try to refute that, then; you're mocking the truth.

Pre-Arab Spring, your logic was flawless.  But being a strong dictator alone is no assurance of stability anymore.  Syria, Egypt and Libya come to mind.

[Fox Fire]

Lots of people care. I for one, care a great deal.

But you actually don't...

[Fox Fire]

Yes, I do. 

Sure...

[WISD0MTREE]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2035160/Most-Afghans-know-9-11-according-disturbing-poll.html

 

[Solomon]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2035160/Most-Afghans-know-9-11-according-disturbing-poll.html

 

It may be true that many Afghans are ignorant of the World Trade Center bombing, but you do realize what the Daily Mail is like, don't you? Did you see the story at the top about how the "killer co-pilot" drugged the captain's coffee with a diuretic to make him pee! It's about as reliable as the National Enquirer.

[elsuper]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2035160/Most-Afghans-know-9-11-according-disturbing-poll.html

 

 

But what are the implications of this to the question in the OP? My reaction is that, if anti-American sentiment were deeply held in Afghanistan unrelated to the occupation, there would be more awareness and pride surrounding their greatest "victory" against the U.S.

 

Edit: And where's our basic psy-ops/propaganda to inform the people of Afghanistan of our reasons for being there? Seems like a basic step toward "winning hearts and minds," even if some think it's all lies, at least some will believe it.

Edited April 9, 2015 by elsuper

[Pol Pot]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2035160/Most-Afghans-know-9-11-according-disturbing-poll.html

 

daily mail is disgusting bourgeoisie propaganda and should never be used as a source of infomation.