"We have more now on that explosion yesterday in downtown Chicago. Mexico’s civilian intelligence agency, the Centro de Información de Seguridad Nacional (CISEN), had determined that Henry Samuels, the owner of a local chain of convenience stores, was a key kingpin in the illegal drug market in the US. CISEN released a statement today saying that the United States’ insatiable appetite for drugs constitutes a clear and present danger to Mexico’s national security. CISEN has therefore initiated a program of identifying those people believed to be key personnel in the American illegal drug trade, and neutralizing them using predator drones. Although this also results in the destruction of surrounding property, and the death of several innocent civilians, including children, the American government has issued a statement that despite the collateral damage, the United States stands firmly in support of Mexico, a key partner in the War on Drugs."
Ridiculous, right?
Not so much.
Replace "Mexico" with "United States," "CISEN" with "CIA," "Chicago" with "Khyber," and "War on Drugs" with "War on Terror," and you have a thumbnail sketch of modern-day Pakistan. Based strictly on their own secret intelligence, and in the absence of due process, our CIA, supported by the tax dollars that we can't seem to spare for schools, libraries and fire departments, picks out the bad guys in Pakistan and blows them up using remote control drones. Never mind that there are also a few wives, aunts, uncles, and kids nearby, and even some neighbors that don’t have any relationship to the "bad guy." Never mind that there might be someone driving by who turned down the wrong street looking for a birthday party. And don’t even fret about the whole "What if we’re wrong?" scenario. This is War, people! War on Terror! And we won’t stop fighting it until we’ve won!
Unfortunately, a war footing justifies a lot of things that people would not otherwise tolerate. Spending, hardship, and the sacrifice of those near and dear to us are all burdens our nation has been willing to bear during wartime. Whip up enough fervor for it, and those things which we otherwise consider atrocities seem downright moral when framed in the context of war. Like blowing up kids. And given our new, modern style of war, with non-military agencies driving remote missiles into far-away sovereign nations, where we don’t even have to look at the mess we’ve made, it all seems just that much less atrocious. So it’s all good, right? If it keeps us all safer here in Seattle, Boston, Dallas, etc., it’s all worth it, right? We’re the USA, after all. Nothing trumps that card!
Arguments about morality and effectiveness aside, let’s do some simple math: Pressing a button to send a predator drone raining down on a Pakistani birthday party costs between $4 million and $15 million a whack. We say we do it because we certainly don’t want another 9/11. Over 3,000 people died on 9/11. It was awful. So naturally we spend billions of dollars now in the War on Terror to prevent another such terrorist attack.
Now let’s look at the other side of the ledger. What if we skipped a dozen or so of those drone attacks, and hired some police and some school teachers, buy health insurance for some kids, and kick-start some green industries? How many lives would that save? The statistics for murder in the US appears to have been pretty steady over the past 10 years: between 15,000 and 17,000 a year. I’m just guessing that better policing might at least have put a dent in that statistic. Lack of health insurance claims another estimated 45,000 lives annually. Asthma, cancer, and other illnesses related to fossil fuel pollution also carry costs with them in lost lives, not to mention lost productivity. The cost of a gallon of gas does not include what we pay in both blood and treasure to support the Pentagon’s oil-driven mission. And BP promises to "pay all legitimate claims" for the latest Oops in the Gulf of Mexico, but when asked in Senate hearings whether that included tax revenue lost by local governments due to decimated seafood and tourist industries, the president of BP America answered "Question mark." I kid you not, that’s a quote. What kind of benefits would we see in lives saved and revenue generated if we had the will to slide some of those fossil fuel tax subsidies over to renewable energy enterprises? So again, never mind the questions of morality, or whether we have effectively deterred another 9/11. If anyone in charge truly started crunching the numbers, our War on Terror not only looks like a bad investment - it looks downright suicidal.
But at least the War on Education is going well.
