The US Congress's official 9/11 Commission Report described America's attackers on that fateful day in 2001 as "entrepreneurial terrorists". Looking at it from an entrepreneurial viewpoint, then, consider the investment al-Qaeda put into that operation. Then look at the return.
The terrorist investment was two years of planning time, the lives of 19 operatives, and a sum of between $US400,000 and $US500,000, according to the commission's report.
Now consider the return. The direct, immediate, measurable harm was 2997 victims killed and an economic cost of $US36 billion, according to the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The cost in human life to the US was 157 times the loss to the terrorist group. The economic damage inflicted was 72,000 times the amount al-Qaeda spent.
The plotters took aim at the US economy. It's often claimed that the attack created the 2001 recession, which threw 2.3 million Americans out of work. Indeed, Osama bin Laden has claimed credit for the recession and the $US1 trillion worth of economic losses as a result.
It's an empty boast. The US sharemarket had crunched in 2000 and by the time of the attack the recession was six months old. The downturn ended within two months of the September 11 attacks.
Another important return on al-Qaeda's investment was recognition. When bin Laden delivered his 1996 "declaration of war" on America on US network TV, few noticed. But after 2001, he would no longer have to rant to an empty desert. He was now one of the best-known people on the planet.
These returns on bin Laden's outlay started to look less compelling as the US response and global reaction took shape. The civilised world sided with the US and 90 nations mobilised to move into Afghanistan to purge it of al-Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors.
The popularity of George Bush shot up to 90 per cent. Visiting a mosque, he emphasised the US had no quarrel with the peaceful religion of Islam, only with the extremist Islamists who were perverting a great religion.
The world united behind America, America united behind Bush, and for a while it seemed al-Qaeda's tactical success was a strategic error, that the short-term return on its investment was about to be obliterated by a longer-term wipeout.
But the market for al-Qaeda's investment hit a major inflexion point in 2003. The Bush administration went off on a quixotic tangent when Bush fabricated a case for invading Iraq. Dishonestly conflating the Afghan campaign with the Iraq invasion, Bush gave bin Laden a jackpot.
Four things happened. First, the US launched the Iraq war without adding to American security one jot, and without doing the slightest damage to al-Qaeda and its allies. The cost in lives and treasure was immense.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the US has already allocated a total of $US751 billion to the Iraq war since the invasion began, or 69 per cent of all American spending on post-September 11 military operations.
This is about 1.5 million times more than al-Qaeda invested in the September 11 attacks. And 4418 US troops have died in Iraq, 232 times as many terrorists were sacrificed in attacking America on September 11. The biggest single return on the terrorists' investment was entirely self-inflicted by the US leadership.
Second, the Afghanistan war was downgraded and successes there soon reversed. The Taliban have made a comeback. This, in turn, has protracted the war in Afghanistan and raised the costs. We can never know how the war might have gone in the absence of the Iraqi red herring, but the Afghan deployment has now run for nine years and cost Uncle Sam $US336 billion and 1278 dead. The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, is now negotiating a post-US power-sharing agreement with the Taliban.
Third, these costs contributed to the US deficit, undercutting fiscal strength before the downturn. The US spending on the deployments in 2008 was $US185 billion, almost half the annual government deficit that year of $US400 billion.
Taken together, US spending on post-September 11 combat operations is $US1.08 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Bin Laden gets to claim his trillion-dollar prize after all. That's a return of 2.17 million times his outlay. And the toll of American dead from these operations is 5696, or 300 times the number of September 11 terrorists.
Fourth, the invasion of Iraq divided US domestic support for its military efforts. And fifth, with many seeing the attack on Iraq as unjustified and illegitimate, the US lost support around the world. In an August opinion poll of six Muslim-majority countries conducted by three credible US outfits, bin Laden was the sixth most-admired "world leader" among respondents. The current US President did not make the list.
As for the religious and political bitterness in America, that is a bonus for bin Laden. As The New York Times summarised yesterday: "The ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks … was marked … by the memorials and prayer services of the past, but also by … heated demonstrations blocks from Ground Zero, political and religious tensions and an unmistakable sense that a once-unifying day was now replete with division."
It was truly a super-profitable venture for the terrorists, but they couldn't have done it by themselves.
A great power cannot be provoked unless it allows itself to be.
Peter Hartcher is the international editor.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
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