OK, I was running from a figure I heard sometime (years) back. So slightly shy of 3000. Doesn't change the fact that $45 billion a year saving 3000 lives per year is only $15 million per year, not $90 million. Nor does it chaneg the fact that the cost to the American people is about $150 per person per year.

Again, the chances of you dying in a terrorist attack are almost nothing.

Have you bought life insurance lately? That's cheaper than most people over 30 pay for term life and the odds of a 30-40 year old dying are pretty damned miniscule as well.

I guarantee the chances are higher than those of dying in a terrorist attack.

http://reason.com/archives/2006/08/11/dont-be-terrorized

http://www.mattbarr.com/archives/2006/09/your_chance_of.html

So 1 in a trillion versus one in 100 million. The point is you are over paying in both cases. Tell you what, consider an extra $150 each year from the $25,000 I pay every year in taxes to cover you. My treat.

I could keep posting more links, but I just recommend you Google "Probability of dying in a terrorist attack" until you agree with me. :-)

The other thing to consider is this: You and I are both (I'm assuming) capable of spending an additional $150 per year. The US government is not. The US Government is in massive amounts of unsustainable debt.

I typed that before your posts. Fact is, I have no problem paying the money out to protect not only our people, but also our infrastructure. 9/11 wasn't about killing people. It was about damaging our financial status and putting fear into every American. It succeeded on the first but served to solidify us, instead of having us cower in fear on the second.

If people had reacted rationally, and realized that 9/11 wasn't a big deal, then there wouldn't have been any real lasting damage to our economy.

And, as I said on a post I'm sure you didn't read because you were typing your own, the US government is going to cause much more damage by going so deeply in debt.

It's important to realize that loss of life is not the only consequence of terrorism.

I find it humorous when people try to make arguments like "your chances of dying by terrorism are less than getting hit by a car" THEREFORE we should try to prevent terrorism. Maybe the chances are less BECAUSE we spend money on protection! Yo9u can't prove the negative. But if that is the view, then there are a hell of a lot of laws and regulations that need to come off the books. Frankly, I live in Michigan and I can make the argument that since I don't plan to go to an Gulf coast state and I'm not a big fan of sea food, I think it's kind of a waste to spend a bunch of money cleaning up this oil spill. Cap it off and then let nature take it's course. it makes no sense to spend the wealth of the nation or bankrupt a company for the suffering of a relatively few number of people and businesses...Yeah, dumb argument...about as dumb as saying we spend too much protecting the nation from foreign attack!

Think of how many times we have heard politicians and advocates of one sort or another say things like, "I we could save just one more child's life..." But when saving one more life is via military expenditures or national security, the arguments changes. Odd...

For what it's worth, I disagree with rlumley that the biggest problem with the war on terror (or whatever the Obama administration likes to call it now) and other interventionist shit, as well as the domestic implementation of security measures is the monetary cost.

Certainly, the cost is disproportionate, dubiously effective, and most likely the majority of funds are wasted. That however, can only different from most government programs in terms of magnitude; in principle, it wrong to spend money protecting people from terrorism; obviously.

But for me krellin, the fact that your beloved 'military expenditures' have achieved nearly nothing concretely positive, have costed billions, have been used to justify taking away your rights as well as the rights of foreign citizens, and have resulted in the deaths of hudreds of thousands of people around the world... well, it's pretty damning.

I am inclined to believe that f-ing up the Middle East and building lots of weapons is great for American hegemony in the world, but isn't making you much safer. Meanwhile, all these dangers allow successive governments to scare you into giving them more power over you.

If I could save one more child's life I would. But not if it meant killing five foreign children.

Em, I meant to say;

"...in principle, it *isn't* wrong to spend money protecting people from terrorism..."

"But if that is the view, then there are a hell of a lot of laws and regulations that need to come off the books. Frankly, I live in Michigan and I can make the argument that since I don't plan to go to an Gulf coast state and I'm not a big fan of sea food, I think it's kind of a waste to spend a bunch of money cleaning up this oil spill"

You shouldn't have to... BP should foot the bill. (Yes, that's a simplistic approach becaue of the contracting issues etc, but humor me)

"For what it's worth, I disagree with rlumley that the biggest problem with the war on terror (or whatever the Obama administration likes to call it now) and other interventionist shit, as well as the domestic implementation of security measures is the monetary cost."

I never said that it was...

"That however, can only different from most government programs in terms of magnitude; in principle, it [isn't] wrong to spend money protecting people from terrorism; obviously."

Again, I don't disagree. My only point is that the system is ridiculously expensive, and we should actually do some cost/benefit analysis, and decide if we, as a society, want to spend $9 million to save someones life.

And if that's the case, I want my $9 million.

I don't think you can quantitatively or qualitatively state that Us military expenditures have achieve "nothing concretely positive". You are trying to prove a negative - that nothing bad would have happened if we didn't do what we did. I'm not saying everything we do is right - I'm just saying you can't prove your position.

As far as the US killing "hundreds of thousands of people around the world"....Uhhhh...and we've have unjustly killed this many people where??? That's kind of a ridiculous statement...

Of course you can spend too much money protecting yourself. Lives are not worth an infinite amount of money. If it costs $9 million dollars to protect a single life from a terrorist attack (that's assuming Home Sec. actually manages to prevent an attack of 9/11 scale annually) then I think you are definitely overspending. It takes about $10 to save a single sub-Saharan African life of death by diarrheal disease. Oh, but they're Africans. Even still, I'm sure the police, hospitals, and shelters will manage to find ways to save American citizens for drastically less money per life. Use your imagination.

Chrisp +1

And AIDS medicine costs 40 cents per day.

@RLumley - that is a fallacious argument. Your 9 million is per ptential life saved, not per person in the UD. That would only be $150 per year. So the feds owe you $150 and I suggest you not complain if you lose an arm or a leg to a terrorist bombing at the Mall of America.

potential and US. My typing is bad today.

Well according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_terror#Casualties and other related sources...

Lower estimates for the Iraq War range:
96,803 - 105,553 Iraqi Civilians

Higher ranges go up to over 1 million violent deaths (obviously including ethnic tension and general instability caused by the American invasion).

War in Afghanistan
Around 8,500 - 13,000 Afghani Civilians by American estimates.
Other say it's between 10,960 and 49,600

Pakistani Airstrikes
Out of the 1,400 or so killed, it is estimated that as many as half were simply villagers that lived nearby 'genuine' targets. Some Pakistani Sources claim that as few as 14 of those killed were actually al-Qaeda or Taliban members.

American missions around the horn of African and the Phillipines have also reportedly killed several dozen civilians as collateral damage.

rlumley, there are over 22 million people with aids in that region of africa. that's over 8 million dollars a day for just the medicine.

Obviously the statistics are disputed, but I think we can safely say that if not hundreds of thousands, than at least tens of thousands have been killed for dubious rationales.

Also; Hey Chrispminis! :)

"8 million dollars a day for just the medicine."

Trip, spending millions of dollars to save millions of people rather than millions of dollars for one person (dubiously) was the point. :)

it's not one person. terrorists don't announce who they are going to kill. OBL doesn't show up on al jazeera saying he's going after bob johnson from detroit michigan. He says all infidels.

I think the main problem that people have with Americans is that we seem to go to extreme lengths to stop terrorism. Americans, however, for the most part, don't feel that our measures are extreme. Throughout the 1990s and 2001, there were no less than four terrorist attacks on our soil. 9/11 was traumatizing. We needed a positive response. Friendly Sword, you can mock the new airline security all you want, but the bottom line is that since 9/11, not a single airplane has blown up one of our landmarks.

Maybe some of our measures were extreme--the Patriot Act, the wars, etc.--but they have been successful, to a degree. The wars were botched, true, but simply pulling out immediately would be stupid. One reason why Iraq inspired such anti-US sentiment was because the US army never established law and order. Simply leaving would create looting as bad as when Baghdad fell--which was probably the worst part of the war.

As for the Obama worship, I agree that that is a problem. We have one conservative news station, and three liberal ones. Obama has now refused to talk with Fox News, moving one step closer to a media monopoly. It was clear he promised too much, and accomplishing everything was impossible. Guantanamo, for example, was a political quagmire. It killed Bush. He would have closed it if it was feasible, but the nature of our military status makes it hard to close.

Health care is a very touchy issue. For American standards, that bill is one step from communism. Just getting what he did is a minor miracle. Our system was designed to resist change, not embrace it like most European governments. Be happy with the bill as it is, and in all likelihood more liberal changes will follow.