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Comment by desdiv | Hacker News Reader

"All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qa'ida in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human economic and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits to their private companies. This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers as we alongside the Mujahedin bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. All Praise is due to Allah.

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."[0]

-Osama bin Laden

[0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16990-2004Nov...

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It makes me sad that over a decade later, we still fall for that trap.

My rule of thumb to explain things is "follow the money". Several industries have handsomly profited over this situation, but don't believe anybody else gained from that: not us Americans as a whole, certainly not those who had to deal with war in their own place.

I have been in the US since 2000 and I really believe this country needs war to stay together. Without an external enemy people will start fighting each other.

I have difficulty seeing the Iraq War (or Vietnam, or really any war since WW2) as a source of unity among Americans.

How about the "Cold war" and the "War on terror"? I agree that the country is looking for a feel good war where they get out as heroes and winners like WW2. The golf wars were planned to be that but didn't work out.

Let’s unify around renewable energy for the world.

And open source knowledge!

If you had been here during the 90s, you would have seen us being perfectly fine without a war. Not that the 90s were completely peaceful for us, but we had long stretches without much going on.

There was plenty of stupid political infighting, but nothing like the division caused by the invasion of Iraq.

From a distance it looked like the country lost its mind with the Clinton situation. I think that was also the start of the current extreme partisanship.

It was far worse with Obama, despite the wars going on.

huh? crack epidemic. Rodney King. Gang violence. NYC crime wave. etc.

All (except Rodney King) trending nicely down during that time.

Perpetual war against impoverished countries isn't bringing the US together--in truth it's one of the biggest issues currently tearing the US public apart.

> Without an external enemy people will start fighting each other.

Thank God there's none of that happening.

I don’t think that’s true. I’d argue the opposite. Especially given the whole melting pot nature. Whoever the current “enemy” is there always plenty of “them” or people who look like “them” living here which means we get things like internment of Japanese Americans or the harassment of anybody who looks like they could be from the Middle East.

There is plenty of patriotism drummed up buts it’s all shallow. Support the troops has more to do with letting your government send them to die wherever they want and less about concern for them.

"but don't believe anybody else gained from that: not us Americans as a whole"

Engineering Departments get large portions of their revenues through Defense programs. MIT's Lincoln Laboratory made 27% of their revenue (roughly a billion dollars) in 2016. That's one research center.

Do you have an engineering degree? Were your facilities nice? Might want to follow the money with that.

http://web.mit.edu/facts/financial.html

But is it worth millions dead?

Lincoln Labs is an R&D facility dedicated to military technology. It doesn't really make sense to compare their funding composition to facilities without similar purpose.

I think we probably could have figured out a way to give MIT $1 billion/year without going to war for $1.5 trillion. Like maybe not going to war and instead spending that money on research.

There's nothing in your comment that logically follows that a war is required to give engineering grants. Solution: Give engineering departments money without a war. You would, in fact, have far more money to give if it wasn't spent on war.

History and the technology we all use today disagrees with you.

NASA (really NACA) wouldn’t exist today if the Soviets hadn’t launched Sputnik. Competition and fear spur quite a bit of innovation and public reason for funding research projects.

Convincing large amounts of people to give you money without reason doesn’t usually work. War is easy to sell, people can conceptualize the risk easily. I’d argue you’d see more funding and research for preventing climate change if it were as easy to conceptualize risk wise for the general public.

I’m skeptical Russia’s financial woes were solely caused by this strategy.

Well it most definitely didn't help their situation at all.

You're right, there were at most 2000 Arab mujahideen in Afghanistan during that war. The afghan resistance did most of the work, and most of the damage was done thanks to US-provided Stinger missiles -- they managed to shoot down 100 aircraft and 300 helicopters.

Yeah, Bin Laden was engaging in a bit of PR with those statements. In such circumstances people always try to take as much credit as they can, no matter how exaggerated it is.

And for Bin Laden that war was probably center of his universe. For the USSR it might have been kind of a big deal, but probably not the only issue they were dealing with worldwide and domestically. Bin Laden was probably never that concerned with representing that accurately, you know, because who's going to set him straight?

It would only bankrupt America if Americans demanded social welfare at the same level as other 1st world nations. Instead of nurses we get soldiers, instead of housing for the poor we get army bases. If we demanded both, then maybe we'd go bankrupt.

One of the many problems with that is that the cost of the soldiers and military bases only goes up and at breakneck pace. The latest defense spending bill came with an increase of $85 billion. It'll go up again next year.

When I think about that increase it hurts to remember that when Bernie Sanders proposed free college for everyone people said the $60-70 billion price tag was too high. Where would we get the money? Then no one blinked when we increased defense spending by an even greater amount.

Have you ever looked at the federal budget? I'd say we're demanding plenty of both...and we're going bankrupt.

It would have been cheaper and easier to go after the money financing those, if it were not for political issues

Not a convincing argument from Osama.

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