SOME NUMBERS ABOUT THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
---Warren D Smith Feb 2003---------------

Total number killed during terrorist
destruction of WTC and pentagon-wing: 3000.
(This was all caused by 20 guys with plastic knives; the FBI has
estimated their total budget was $100,000.)

Total construction cost of World trade center: $1.5 billion.

Number Afghans killed in US-Afghan war: Unknown, but 20,000 estimated
(both "ours"and "theirs")

Total amount spent by Bush administration to bomb and otherwise
make war on Afghanistan:
  $27.2 billion during 2003 (planned)
  plus about $40 billion previously spent
thus totalling about... $67 billion
[also: $379 billion per year on defense dept., all costs, planned]

Note, if 1 US life is currently "worth" $1 million, i.e. the average
US person could and would pay $1 million to save their own life, then 
this $67 billion in spending constitutes an effective "sacrifice"
of 6700 US lives worth of e.g., money, or of time lost.

Total amount budgeted by Bush administration (2003) to reconstruct Afghanistan: ZERO!
But congress changed this to: $300 million.
(Assuming bombs cause more monetary destruction than they cost - and
if they don't, why does anybody use them? - this is completely inadequate...)

Afghanistan:
Gross domestic product GDP = $21 billion  (less than US war spending!)
Population = 26 million
Land Area = 647500 square km [note this considerably larger than
California (400000 square km)]

Total number of US men on the ground in Afghanistan: about 1000 (small!).
[For the purpose of finding  Osama Bin Laden "dead or
alive", the primary declared US war aim, this number of men
on the ground is totally inadequate.  It is essentially 1 
soldier per mile of Afghanistan border, if they were uniformly spaced
and located on the border, both of which they of course were not. 
If we had 50000 men on the ground (1 per 100 feet of border) then
maybe we could have a decent chance of finding somebody.  
(I mean, there are way more than 1000 cops in Philadelphia alone, and they
often fail to find somebody who is way short of being an ultrarich terrorist
mastermind with lots of popular support.) So the US intentionally did 
not adopt a strategy that was likely to succeed in their declared war aim.

CONCLUSIONS:
1. The US never had a good chance, and knew it never had a good chance, to
find Osama Bin Laden.
2. The total number of deaths (20000?) caused by the war, far exceeded the
number of deaths (3000) it was intended to retaliate for or perhaps prevent.  
Almost everybody who died had nothing to do with the WTC attack
and did not know of plans for the WTC attack (perhaps 100 at most knew
of it, and this figure is probably very generous - indeed the FBI has
claimed they believe even many of the 20 plane hijackers themselves did
not know what was planned).
3. The total number (6700) of effective-US-lives (worth of money and time) the US
has sacrificed to have this war, far exceeded the number of deaths (3000)
it was intended to retaliate for or perhaps prevent, and far exceeded
the 100-or-fewer deaths of those who actually might have had something
to do with the WTC attack. 
4. The total amount of money the US spent to "cure the problem" was
over 10 times larger than the amount of money representing the size of the problem.
It was also larger than the total income of verybody in Afghanistan.
(Couldn't they have just paid 2 years salary to each Afghan if they
promised to be nice to us? Simpler, cheaper, more effective at
converting them from enemies to friends?) Despite that, it is not
clear that the US is now safer than if we had done nothing...
For example, if the whole Afghan war had happened BEFORE the WTC
attack, would it have prevented that attack? I doubt it.  On the other
hand a move which definitely would have prevented that attack -
reinforcing airliner cockpit doors enough so 5 guys with plastic knives could
not break though them - still has not been implemented due to
objections (on grounds of convenience and expense) by airline
companies.  Bush agreed with the airline companies.

ANALOGY (3000X SCALED DOWN DAMAGE VERSION OF AFGHAN WAR):
Suppose some terrorist T kills your relative, in the process killing
himself and causing half a million dollars worth of damage.
Is it logical to devote 3 entire lives and 5 million dollars
to the process of destroying the hometown of the person L who supposedly
was the friend and counselor of T (although that is only about 70%
certain) including killing 7 people in that town 
(but not actually doing anything to L himself - and knowing ahead of
time it is 90% probable that you'll never capture L)?
Or should this course of action be regarded as insanely vengeful?

THE QUESTION OF STRONG AIRLINE COCKPIT DOORS:
Let's analyse this.  Suppose each such door costs $10000 to install
(per plane) and suppose its presence causes inconvenience (need to
open the door using some special protocol involving parties on both
sides of the door...) worth 5 extra minutes of wasted time per 3-hour
flight, for each of 4 people (so in each 12-hour day worth of flying, that 
is 80 wasted person-minutes).  Also, the new doors weigh more than the
old ones, which costs additional airplane fuel.

All that is a cost.  The BENEFIT would be: no WTC disaster, saving 3000
lives and $1.5 billion (construction cost of WTC).  Is our cost
greater or less than the benefit?
COST: It appears the total number of US airliners is roughly 6000.
The net installation cost for all those doors is then $60 million.
Assume each plane is in the air 12 hours out of each 24. That means
1.5 million wasted person-hours per year (total, countrywide) once the doors are 
installed, which at $50/hour is about $75 million dollars worth of lost time.
If the fuel to carry the new doors costs $100/day per airliner that is
$220 million per year in fuel.
VERDICT: The benefit ($4.5 billion at $1 million per "life") of strong
airliner cockpit doors far exceeds this cost (75+60+220 million$), and
so Bush made the wrong decision by not requiring them.