How much is security worth - literally?

It is stunning how many people think there are no options for improving the situation in the Middle East, whether the specific issue is Iraq or Israel. My father provided me with the most stark statement on this: “Just give every person in the region one M-16 [assault rifle, for those who didn’t grow up in a military family] and one clip with 18 rounds, and let them figure out their problems that way.” Indeed.

 

But one might ask: If the stability in that region is directly related to the security of the US, and if we supposedly are willing to spend lots of time, money, blood, etc. trying to secure ourselves, then what is the threshold? How much are we willing to spend?

 

Now for some not-at-all serious hypothetical fun:

 

“The Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated that the total, eventual costs of the Iraq war, ‘including the budgetary, social and macroeconomic costs, are likely to exceed $2 trillion’ - that's $2,000,000,000,000. That would be $2,000 a head for each of the world's poorest billion people, who live (and die) on less than $1 a day” (“If we miss this last chance, then our soldiers will have died in vain,” The Guardian, October 26, 2006).

 

Here’s the rub: imagine we spend that much and things don’t improve. Imagine we spend that much and (according to recent State Department assessments, which call Iraq the “cause celebre” of fanatics) things get worse for them and more dangerous for us.

 

Then imagine if we had someone crazy enough to suggest that we spent that much in the first place to improve the standard of living of the people in the region. Imagine some psycho suggesting that if the average schmuck’s life doesn’t suck beyond belief, such that he has no job, prospects, security, or hope, such that he is willing to strap a bomb to his chest at age 25—imagine somebody saying that if this weren’t the case, the fanatic-types would lose their support base. Imagine, just for a second, if we pumped 2 trillion dollars into the Palestinian territories. With the addendum that the Israelis aren’t allowed to come in and take it. You couldn’t fit that much money in those areas. The streets would be paved with gold. Everybody would be wearing Italian clothes and driving BMWs. People wouldn’t even know how to be terrorists because they would be too trying to find stuff to buy (because there are no shops there).

 

Crazy, I know. I’d never suggest this. No one would. But it is interesting to note that those countries who pump their international diplomacy full of benevolence don’t tend to get blown up.

 

Well, it would have been nice to find a psychotic-yet-charismatic prophet who could have convinced us 3 or 10 or 50 years ago that if we would front these kinds of resources we would preclude all sorts of retarded poop. Especially if he told us that we were going to pay this much anyway, in order to encourage all sorts of retarded poop.

 

Unfortunately, it’s hard sometimes to figure out who the really crazy people are, while it’s all too easy to avoid avoiding retarded poop.

 

-W.