Al Qaeda
Special Report: The War Racket
“Al Qaeda has won
the War on Terror!”
“But we haven’t had a successful large terrorist attack on America since 9-11.”
As they say in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, “Ya sure, you betcha! At what cost, monetarily, in regard to the lives of our troops, and the limitations of our personal freedoms?”
Putting this in a realistic perspective, it is reported that there are 100 Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, and maybe a few hundred more in Pakistan. Then there are bunches in Yemen and Somalia and scattered in other countries around the world. There are probably equal numbers in western democracies and in Islamic and developing countries. If we were to qualify only those who have both the desire and the where with all to directly attack the United States or European countries, adding in similar groups, the worldwide total of Islamic jihadis is probably less than 10,000.
So what does it cost to keep us safe from these hordes of wild extremists?
According to Wikipedia based on numbers from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, (SIPRI) the United States leads the world in military expenditures at $660 billion, followed by China at about $100 billion, France at $64 billion, the United Kingdom at $58 billion, and Russia at about $53 billion. You have to go to the SIPRI website to find out what their definition of what is a military expenditure.
One could assume from their definition that the $660 billion figure includes the wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan, but not Homeland Security and various transfer payments within and without the United States, not directly tied to the military expenditure definition. Since Wonder Springs has no way of quantifying that number we will take an educated guess of perhaps $440 billion, bringing the yearly total to a trillion bucks. That makes our War on Terror assessment equal to $10 million per really bad guy — per year.
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“But we haven’t had a successful large terrorist attack on America since 9-11.”
As they say in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, “Ya sure, you betcha! At what cost, monetarily, in regard to the lives of our troops, and the limitations of our personal freedoms?”
Putting this in a realistic perspective, it is reported that there are 100 Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, and maybe a few hundred more in Pakistan. Then there are bunches in Yemen and Somalia and scattered in other countries around the world. There are probably equal numbers in western democracies and in Islamic and developing countries. If we were to qualify only those who have both the desire and the where with all to directly attack the United States or European countries, adding in similar groups, the worldwide total of Islamic jihadis is probably less than 10,000.
So what does it cost to keep us safe from these hordes of wild extremists?
According to Wikipedia based on numbers from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, (SIPRI) the United States leads the world in military expenditures at $660 billion, followed by China at about $100 billion, France at $64 billion, the United Kingdom at $58 billion, and Russia at about $53 billion. You have to go to the SIPRI website to find out what their definition of what is a military expenditure.
One could assume from their definition that the $660 billion figure includes the wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan, but not Homeland Security and various transfer payments within and without the United States, not directly tied to the military expenditure definition. Since Wonder Springs has no way of quantifying that number we will take an educated guess of perhaps $440 billion, bringing the yearly total to a trillion bucks. That makes our War on Terror assessment equal to $10 million per really bad guy — per year.
Read More...
Redux Rendezvous VI
30/June/2010 10:13 Filed in: Weekly
Column
When I completed Monday’s article
“In My Tent Leadership” on Gen. McChrystal
and the war in Afghanistan, I couldn’t help
thinking that to do this thing right we could have
the makings of a 30 year war, in a country that no
one thinks it truly is worth the bother. To my
surprise when I opened my emails Tuesday morning I
was hit with the headline
“The 30 Year War in Afghanistan.” As I read
the article from Stratfor, I began to understand
that their analysis believed that our war in
Afghanistan began in 1980, when we offered support
to the mujahideen to block Soviet advances. With
President Obama’s decision to escalate American
involvement when he took office, the war entered
Phase 4. It is now Obama’s war. This opens the
question will this be Obama’s Vietnam?
Over the weekend reports say that the Canadians spent a billion dollars to protect the G20 leaders from anarchists riots in Toronto, where 900 people were arrested. Maybe Afghanistan is not such a bad investment in that context.
In a developing story ten deep cover Russian spies were arrested in America just like in the good old days of the Cold War. We could go on, but rather than focus on war as and end, perhaps a better description of war is an attempt to control chaos. Chaos however begets chaos, and in the common sense definition of what is happening in the world, the change we were told we could believe in, is really chaos seemingly feeding upon itself.
Since the end of the Korean Conflict, for the United States our wars have been defined in terms of either insurgencies or counterinsurgencies. In Vietnam we were engaged in a counterinsurgency with the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. In the Gulf War we fought a traditional war, and abandoned the war efforts before either term really applied. With the true Iraq War a similar result was quickly obtained, but pacifying the country quickly became counterinsurgency, against indigenous militias, foreign mercenaries, Al-Qaeda, Iran, and others.
It seems that the Iraq counterinsurgency is finally working, but many problems still remain. Afghanistan is still a very open and troubling question. Historically, the only truly decisive counterinsurgency victory was the British success in then Burma, where Black ops personnel basically hunted down the communist bad guys and killed them. Half a century later Burma is now Myanmar, one of the most oppressive communist régimes in history.
Our Redux Rendezvous emphasis today however, is not to promote or even describe warfare, but rather to focus upon major current worldviews that seem to be either insurgencies or counterinsurgencies in a world in which we all hope will return to order, rather than deepening chaos. In the broader picture this is currently not so much a guns and bullets war, but rather an economic war, or wars.
Read More...
Over the weekend reports say that the Canadians spent a billion dollars to protect the G20 leaders from anarchists riots in Toronto, where 900 people were arrested. Maybe Afghanistan is not such a bad investment in that context.
In a developing story ten deep cover Russian spies were arrested in America just like in the good old days of the Cold War. We could go on, but rather than focus on war as and end, perhaps a better description of war is an attempt to control chaos. Chaos however begets chaos, and in the common sense definition of what is happening in the world, the change we were told we could believe in, is really chaos seemingly feeding upon itself.
Since the end of the Korean Conflict, for the United States our wars have been defined in terms of either insurgencies or counterinsurgencies. In Vietnam we were engaged in a counterinsurgency with the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. In the Gulf War we fought a traditional war, and abandoned the war efforts before either term really applied. With the true Iraq War a similar result was quickly obtained, but pacifying the country quickly became counterinsurgency, against indigenous militias, foreign mercenaries, Al-Qaeda, Iran, and others.
It seems that the Iraq counterinsurgency is finally working, but many problems still remain. Afghanistan is still a very open and troubling question. Historically, the only truly decisive counterinsurgency victory was the British success in then Burma, where Black ops personnel basically hunted down the communist bad guys and killed them. Half a century later Burma is now Myanmar, one of the most oppressive communist régimes in history.
Our Redux Rendezvous emphasis today however, is not to promote or even describe warfare, but rather to focus upon major current worldviews that seem to be either insurgencies or counterinsurgencies in a world in which we all hope will return to order, rather than deepening chaos. In the broader picture this is currently not so much a guns and bullets war, but rather an economic war, or wars.
Read More...