According to Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations the number of Americans recently  killed in terrorist attacks is comparable to the number crushed to death by falling television sets or furniture each year.

Yet in pursuit of the so-called War on Terror, now re-named “overseas contingency operations”, the US will, in 2012, spend $500 billion on “fighting” this ephemeral threat.  It is reckoned that there are probably no more than 100 dedicated anti-US terrorists still operating, which means the taxpayer is paying $5 billion per terrorist.  Add to this the individual state departments of homeland security and protection of scores of “vulnerable” Federal buildings and events through out the country, and you can easily double this figure.

Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the war against Iraq cost $5 trillion, and the war against Afghanistan will be of a similar order of cost., with no terrorist attacks on the mainland of the United States to justify such expenditure.  As Philip Giraldi, writing on antiwar.com, points out, bin Laden said that he aimed to break the United States economically by enticing it to overreact to terrorist incidents.   His legacy is secure and his forecast was spot on.  So much for the politician’s love of country.

Where bin Laden was clever was in spotting that the constant development of warlike materials and the unstoppable growth of the armed forces and “homeland security” is the vulnerable underbelly and Achilles heel of the United States.  If there is no war there is no call for bullets, tanks and planes. What then do the bullet, tank and plane makers do?   There can be no end to these draining and bankrupting wars because the bigger the defense industry gets the harder it is to say “no” to them.

This will be the chief verdict after all the bills have come in and the world asks “Whatever happened to American power?”  A wicked plot?  Probably not;  just dumb stupidity.