The Bush Administration has been credited for nearly the last decade with their lead and direction in the War on Terror - an international “war,” led mostly by American political ideologies, on a group of political organizations which have been labeled to have “terrorist” ties.

Terrorism itself is a difficult term to class - it’s often accepted that any violent political or ideological movement which shows disregard for international laws of war, or the lives of innocent non-combatants is terroristic in nature. This definition accounts for the majority of groups targeted by the War on Terror.

George W. Bush, the President of the United States from 2001 until 2009, is highly blamed for much of the War on Terror. It’s unfair and indicative of misunderstanding to blame Bush directly, rather, the entirety of the political institution and Republican establishment was involved in most decision making. Bush’s legitimacy in terms of democratic election is highly disputed - in the 2001 election, George W. Bush lost the popular vote to the alternative candidate and environmentalism activist Al Gore. The Supreme Court awarded George W. Bush the number of required electoral seats by a margin of just over 500 votes - a lofty decision. In future independent recounts, it was demonstrated statistically that Al Gore would have won if a full recount was ordered.

Shortly after arriving to office, in September of his inauguration year, the suicide attacks on the World Trade Centers in New York City were launched. Nineteen Islamist terrorists have been since accredited with responsibility for hijacking four commercial airliners, crashing two of them in to the World Trade Center buildings causing them to collapse - and destroy or damage at least numerous surrounding buildings¹. Just under 3,000 people were killed in these attacks from an international trade and banking community - well over 6,000 additional people were injured from the attacks.

The response to this attack was widespread panic. Initiation of a number of entirely rational security programs including flying the president to an unidentified secured airforce base, initiating a no-fly order and finally, setting the ground for the War on Terror. Being Commander in Chief, George W. Bush claims the response to an attack needed to be swift, timely and strong; invading Afghanistan, in an effort to catch Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda termed responsible for the attacks, and disband other al-Qaeda directed terrorist organizations.

Terrorist organizations similar to, or under al-Qaeda’s umbrella in Afghanistan and otherwise involved in the War on Terror include the Taliban, Al Shabaab, and the Muslim Brotherhood. All of which are involved in a Muslimist movement - particularly a movement of anti-Americanism. Why anti-Americanism? It’s not as simple as jealousy - rather, a movement against the colonialist movement of the American military enterprise. Holding soldiers in 130 countries internationally (at least, according to Senator Ron Paul’s legendary book “The Revolution: A Manifesto“, is expensive, but it’s also offensive - citizens in other countries, particularly those with access to violence and little to lose. We see a number of international agents who feel as though they’re losing their sovereignty to American forces - especially when the American military enterprise dominates a particular ideology. It’s interesting situations such as Iraq, where citizens are being oppressed are still likely to end up resentful; but when the situation is democratically instilled, and the political movements are agreeable with the population, interventionism takes the form of a direct insult.

Let’s forget the libertarian theory for a second and approach some numbers. Amy Belasco’s political science analysis of the spending on Iraq, Afghanistan and the general War on Terror in her 2008 published Report for Congress detailing authorized military spending towards various targets and goals. Her analysis concluded that including the 2009 bridge, the total cost was $864 billion broken up as follows (blue line represents per annum spending, while the green line represents the cumulative spending during Bush’s term; data collected from Amy Belasco’s CRS Report for Congress “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11″).

An analysis of this data is hardly the position of this article, but, suffice it to say we’ve spent a lot of money on this war - whether it’s worth the returns or not is up to your analysis, but the RAND Corporation, a nongovernment nonpartisan think tank, known for its strict analysis and rigorously nonpartisan policy analysis has published² a range of research on the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

RAND’s studies, which government funding has now been pulled from (though, that hasn’t marked the end of such research), show the increase in terrorist activity and deaths due to things which have been deemed terroristic such as suicide bombing to increase nearly ten fold. During the Presidency of George Bush and the run of the official War on Terror, deaths due to terrorism have increased - a correlation that supports the theory that interventionist foreign policy directly angers its citizens and encourages violent behavior.

The sociological look at this suggests that raising children and citizenry in a decade of war, a culture of war causes them to see war as a more acceptable solution to problems and increases the saturation of war. Nothing quantifiable, just an interesting view.

With a monetary collapse and financial crisis arising from injections, monetary withdrawal, and likely reduced defense spending coming with President-elect Barack Obama coming in this month, it’s questionable how to justify injections, government distortions and federal funding towards private enterprise. It’s difficult to justify tax rates near 40 per cent when American troops are stationed in 130 countries worldwide. It’s difficult to justify further distorting and contracting the economy during a recession by wasting value being a hegemonic institution - reverting to a freedom-loving self-interested foreign policy, and allowing international institutions such as Interpol and (less costly) trade sanctions to enforce international security may be the solution. This editor is not an international security professional, but, economically - this doesn’t make sense.

From Politonomist.com’s Op/Ed department this article represents an editor’s opinion and not that of the whole site. See our structure for more information on how opinions are treated as equally at Politonomist - and contribute your opinion in a comment below!

¹ Just an interesting aside here, population density in reality likely decreases value for a number of reasons, but this is one that’s rarely considered - the risk of being blown up. Or, more nonpartisan, the risk of damaging spillover effects.

² Interestingly, the RAND Corporation also publishes a the RAND Journal of Economics - one of the most respected economics journals in the world, and the scientifically functional A Million Random Digits With 100,000 Normal Deviates which generally makes nonscience-types laugh.

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