I try to avoid getting caught up in the 9/11 retrospective hype. I’ve already had my say (A Personal Recollection From a Day of Horror (September 12th, 2001).
Meanwhile, here is the NYT’s infographic of the numbers:
Al Qaeda spent roughly half a million dollars to destroy the World Trade Center and cripple the Pentagon. What has been the cost to the United States? In a survey of estimates by The New York Times, the answer is $3.3 trillion, or about $7 million for every dollar Al Qaeda spent planning and executing the attacks. While not all of the costs have been borne by the government — and some are still to come — this total equals one-fifth of the current national debt.
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Click for interactive data:
Source: 9/11 : The Reckoning
NYT, September 8, 2011
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Previously:
A Personal Recollection From a Day of Horror (September 12th, 2001)
Postscript (September 16th, 2001)
Feedback from around the World (September 19th, 2001)
9/11 Reflections (September 11th, 2010)
Category: Digital Media, War/Defense
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
Wow…that is all.
One of the most conspicuous elements of the 9/11 event is: Why did this happen? What did Al Qudea want? What do they want today? What do the “Islamist Extremists” we read about want? No one ever asks these questions. They don’t want to convert us to their religion as is often the case with Christians wanting to convert the world to theirs. What is it then?
yes yes yes, but they killed 3000 and we have killed 1000000 in the name of the war on terror. We are way ahead on that performance metric.
On could argue of course, that some portion of those costs, such as the Iraq war and much of the additional security apparatus–are opportunistically self-inflicted and not directly attributable to al qaeda. Still, it would leave a significantly large number. Maybe they should do similar chart showing the damage done to us by Wall Street.
Louiswi–what al qaeda wanted, in simple terms, was the overthrow of secular and modern societies. No, they didn’t really want to convert us, they are mainly concerned with the Muslim countries of the middle east. A vision, essentially, of a restoration of the old Caliphate. They strike at us because of our position in the world and the support our economic and military power give to their enemies (their targets were not chosen at random.) It is of course, more complicated than a four-sentence description, but it is not mysterious.
the NYT seems stock-sure about the “Al Qaeda”-angle (just, as they were w/ “Saddam’s WMD”..)
We, on other hand, may do well to wonder..
“….Indeed, 9/11 Commissioners and other officials say that the true facts were hidden from them, or covered up (you don’t have to get bogged down in reading this section – you can skip ahead to the next, if you like; this is just documenting that the 9/11 Commission report is in no way the last word on 9/11):
The 9/11 Commission’s co-chairs said that the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials misrepresented the facts to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements (free subscription required)
9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”
9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”
The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – recently said “At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened“. He also said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.” And he said: “It’s almost a culture of concealment, for lack of a better word. There were interviews made at the FAA’s New York center the night of 9/11 and those tapes were destroyed. The CIA tapes of the interrogations were destroyed. The story of 9/11 itself, to put it mildly, was distorted and was completely different from the way things happened”
A 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials, and who has for years been a tireless anti-war advocate and critic of imperial foreign policy (Raymond McGovern) said “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke”….”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/09/high-level-officials-eager-to-spill-the-beans-about-what-really-happened-on-911-but-no-one-in-washington-or-the-media-wants-to-hear.html
though, even, at U$D 3.3 Trillion, the Economic Costs, far, outstrip the Financial tally..
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louiswi,
toward your Q:, see some of.. http://search.yippy.com/search?query=%22Blowback%22+book&tb=sitesearch-all&v%3Aproject=clusty
a plausible *explaination, not often discussed, for it undercuts the furtherance of the “GWOT” ..
http://search.yippy.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&v%3Aproject=clusty&query=GWOT
Louiswi: You ask, “Why did they do it?” I didn’t know that that was something that wasn’t clearly known and obvious. It was stated more than once by Osama bin Laden himself.
From Wikipedia itself: “Al-Qaeda and bin Laden cited U.S. support of Israel, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, and sanctions against Iraq as motives for the attacks.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks.
It’s a shame to spend $3.3 trillion, but not a penny for basic forensic analysis on evidence which was quickly carted off from the crime scene.
And it’s probably no accident.
What we “spent” is probably equal to or less than what was stolen. At least 4 billion in cash was stolen in Iraq, and the Pentagon “can’t account” for several trillion. All that was squandered or pilfered was blood money. While the banks and large corporations might be white collar criminals, the military-industrial operators are war profiteers and thugs.
What you weren’t taught in school (and should never forget after reading):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
Be sure to check the dude’s cred before you decide if he was right.
Louiswi:
SteveinMaine in right, OBL’s goals were stated long before 9-11. Some people, when they tell you that if A doesn’t happen, then B will, are not fucking around. OBL died for what he did, but I’m sure his death was a foregone conclusion in his own mind before he took the first step towards the 9-11 attack.
Well-said, Petey Wheatstraw.
I get a 404 error on the link to your 9/12/2001 story.
I’d guess even grade school children could estimate it would cost buckets more to deploy an aircraft carrier than to buy 19 one way airline tickets.
Perhaps the fact checkers at The Times could spend a half hour or so pondering what costs the US would have incurred had we, collectively, not spent a penny mounting military attacks on terrorists in far-off places. Or focused efforts on Afghanistan only, instead of Iraq, as well.
There are a lot of ways to measure spending effectiveness. I’m sure there are those who can point — quite accurately — to wasteful military and governmental spending on national security. But here is one thing we must note about this, and it’s one thing we can’t say about many other US funding efforts. And that one thing is this: it worked. We all know the US has not suffered a single, significant terrorist attack or incident since 9/11. That’s not the case in Madrid, or London, or many other places too.
The US Treasury found a way to give failing bankers $1 Trillion within a week. All it took was a 3-page Hank Paulson authored memo. That didn’t work. The banks are still a mess, and they still pay themsleves multi-million dollar bonuses. And we not only bailed out US banks; we gave $100′s of billions to foreign banks too — like RBS, and Deutsche Bank, and ING.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s a big reason why a significant majority of Americans hold the instiution of the US military in such high esteem. When we equip them, support them, and ask them to do the hardest jobs — they do it. And it works.
$3 Trillion across 10 years for our security is alot to pay. But the US didn’t ask to fight a war against terrorists. We had to. 3000 souls told us to.
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hammerandtong2001:
Bullshit.
I don’t think the US military is as highly esteemed as you think. The soldiers, yes, the contractors and war profiteers, no.
We could have achieved the same results if every politician who ignored the numerous and credible warnings regarding OBL flying planes into US buildings had been, after the fact, taken out and summarily executed for treasonable negligence.
Instead, they robbed us after we took the beating they allowed.
…$3 Trillion across 10 years for our security is alot to pay. But the US didn’t ask to fight a war against terrorists. We had to. 3000 souls told us to…
What an absolute crock of shit!!
Not to downplay the tragedy of 9/11, but I wondered about a similar analysis of December 7, 1941. The costs of WWII dwarfs 9/11.
Although the 9/11 happened 10 years ago, I don’t think the war is over.
@louiswi. You write, sounding empathetic towards a misspelled Al-Qaeda and accusatory towards the Christians:” They don’t want to convert us to their religion as is often the case with Christians wanting to convert the world to theirs”. Then you ask: “What is it then?” Here’s the obvious answer that somehow eludes you: THEY WANT TO KILL US INFIDELS (Jews and Christians). And they have shown success at that and have stated this goal very openly and backed it up with, for example…..9/11, remember?
mddwave,
You are comparing apples and oranges. WWII was a race to fill in the void left by the collapse of British hegemony. By defeating Germany (then the second largest economy) and Japan (the largest economy in the APAC region), we cemented our leadership in the world. Your childhood memories of white picket fences are that dividend.
We spent all of those 9/11 dollars chasing bearded guys up mountains and deserts. That’s the single dumbest thing we have done as a country.
@tyaresun. Get your numbers straight please. Are you sure we only killed 1 million? Not 10 million, or perhaps even 100 million? Heck, go for 1 billion!
@louiswi again. BTW, even you cannot accuse the Jews, he ultimate “infidels”, of trying to convert anyone to their religion, yet they are Al-Qaeda’s stated prime target (and not for the first time in recent history either). Explain.
victor:
Epic FAIL. They want our military out of their territory.
Really Victor, they traveled 8000 miles because we are infidels?? And just how did Jews enter the conversation?
They very simply want the crusades to stop. They do not want to be occupied by us. They want us out of their countries. Is that asking too much??
You sound a little nutty to me for even suggesting what I sound like.
@ Petey Wheatstraw and @louiswi: We are “in their countries” with the permission of the respective legitimate Governments. Besides being a trading partner and a life guard, the US as a superpower is, at times, also the sheriff of last resort as the UN (or would you rather have China?) is impotent, witness East Congo and Darfur. Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization not a Government. About “how did Jews enter the conversation”:
“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed”, would you like to see the video too?
You won and I failed 100%, besides being “a little nutty”. Great comments!