When we see someone investing huge amounts of energy in pursuit of ephemeral or fantasy goals that have no connection with the real world, we generally conclude that that person is "neurotic."  In fact, that's nearly a definition of neurosis, the stupid expediture of real resources in the pursuit of symbolic values.

Economists have, of course, also covered this ground.  Like the person who walks three blocks to save 50 cents on a hamburger on sale, while ignoring the chance to save ten thousand dollars off a mortgage because it requires too much effort to read through the paperwork.  We tend to discount abstract or future returns and exagerate the worth of immediate gains.

So, what about 9/11?  I've heard all kinds of estimates of how much it cost us, but, for a moment lets forget about the indirect costs that were actually attributable to our response, rather than the real damage to lives and property, and lets look solely at what we would have had to have spent just to return things to where they were.

The only estimate that comes to mind is $3 Billion.  That works out to ten dollars per capita, right?  If it were $30 Billion, probably a high estimate, then it would come to $100 per man, woman or child in the U.S.  Or, to be fair, including only those who are productively employed, ~$200. 

People drop $200 on a New Years Party.  So, for $200 impact on our personal wealth we have virtually wrecked our economy in the pursuit of what?  The original invasion of Afghanistan might conceivably have made some limited sense, on the assumption, that the Taliban were deliberately harboring Al Quida and that this would lead to further attacks.  The Iraq invasion was a disaster followed by a catastrophe.  We might have been better off if we had lost.  At every step of the way, we did exactly the wrong thing.  But everyone knows that.

The issue is why the American public cheered these fiascos along.  I contend that one has to look at the American character to deduce any kind of coherent answer.  I would hypothesize that it is the same primal neurosis that makes people foam at the mouth when they hear of a flag burning, or join the riots that predictably follow major sports events.  These events and the disproportionate reactions are part of a huge underlying neurotic mentality that pervades our culture. 

How hard is it to understand the concept of due process?  Do we want a government that can arrest us and incarcerate us indefinitely without specifying clear charges or providing any opportunity to prove our innocence?  On those terms, most Americans would surely answer a clear and loud NO!!!  Yet that is what we now have.  That's what is wrong with Guantanemo, the secret CIA prisons, the rendering and the torture, and the arrest and disappearance of U.S. citizens, for that matter, although the constitution does not anywhere restrict human rights to Americans. 

It is all based on assuming guilt without any recourse to facts.  And the responce, when one brings this uncomfortable truth to these people?  "Those %&^&*() TERRORISTS have no RIGHTS."  Well, our own home grown murderers can't claim much in the way of rights, either, now can they?   Y  ee   ssss...

But we don't allow some official to just grab someone off the street, declare them a murderer and then string them up or jail and torture them for years without a trial, do we?  We don't even allow the President to do that, do we?  At least we didn't.  See how far that $200 went.  And Osama is laughing his head off as we behave like two-year-olds having a tantrum.  "N..OOOOOOOOOO!"

We lost a sizeable chunk of change and a few thousand probably decent people, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what WWI or WWII or the Korean War, or the Vietnam War, or the Civil War cost us.  But because the terrorists poked a hole in our bubble, because we got our feelings hurt, because virtually every politician or other leader was all too ready to jump on that bandwagon, we responded with as much rationality as the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, or when we entered WWI because one ship, carrying munitions, was sunk.  Remember the Lusitania?  Remeber the Maine? 

Remember the Gulf of Tonkin?  Remember the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq?  How many more times will we go into that neurotic frenzy that our enemies take delight in?  Will we be like the black newsanchor in "Crash" who nearly kills himself out of a symbolic challenge to his manhood? 

Or can we learn somthing about our own proclivities to make the map the territory, to get conned and sucked into a useless neurotic cycle, pursueing goals that are symbolic and therefore inherently unachievable, while our real enemies smirk at our gullibility as they game us out of our birthright and heritage?

Yo Mama!

In response to my one  comment so far, as every time I try to reply in the comment section, it gives me an "Auth errror..."  Sigh...

Thanks, Dr. Guy, for your remarks...

But the ratios are all off the scale of rationality.

9/11 by itself, not counting the response, is estimated to have done about $3 billion in damage.

The 9/11 response, including the two wars and the imposition of all kinds of spur of the moment unconstitutional laws, is estimated to be about $3 TRILLION!

A thousand to one ratio of damage to response is simply not rational, nor sustainable.  The terrorists used BOX CUTTERS.  And so we respond with cruise missiles and the whole might of the U.S. military, making us the laughing stock of the planet.  If intelligence is a measure of the leverage that knowing stuff gets us in dealing with reality, then how does the Al Quida 9/11 team compare to the U.S.? 

We're at 1000/1 results/expense, while they're at 1/1000 on the same scale.  Who comes across as stupid here - by a factor of 1/(1000x1000) or one million times less intelligence than the terrorists displayed? 

This does not rationally compute.  What would have prevented 9/11 even after it was set in motion, would have been intelligent intel.  Instead we close the barn door and then burn down the barn.  THAT'L teach them!