California Libertarian Alliance

“It took nearly a decade after 9/11 to catch and kill Osama bin Laden. During that time, America launched two wars and a new cabinet-level security agency while funneling money into the defense budget at record levels. This was the United States government’s response to bin Laden, yet very little of it contributed to his capture. We know what bin Laden cost us: thousands of American lives, a sense of safety and security for millions more. But now, with bin Laden finally dead, America and its leaders must also come to grips with what we have chosen to spend reacting to his acts of terror—and the sad fact that most of it wasn’t worth the price.”

“In the decade since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has added roughly $950 billion in additional base spending to the defense budget. That’s not total spending; it’s merely the increase over the baseline versus if we’d held military spending constant starting in 2000. Nor does that number include the cost of two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—almost $1.3 trillion as of March 2011—or the $359 billion spent on the Department of Homeland Security, a sort of meta-agency created in 2002 to help coordinate the federal government’s tangled web of security initiatives.”

“It’s a massive commitment of time, money, and manpower, and it costs taxpayers dearly. Annual defense spending increased 84 percent between 2001 and 2011 in 2005-constant dollars. On an individualized basis, the United States spends vastly more than any other country on national security, with more than $2,000 in per capita spending. The United Kingdom, by contrast, spends less than $1,000 per capita.”

Peter Suderman @ Reason looks at how much the US government spent in the name of fighting “terrorism” and how little it protected us @ http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/06/blowback