{"id":36778,"date":"2021-09-12T15:30:45","date_gmt":"2021-09-12T06:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/sep\/12\/lives-lost-poverty-an-arms-race-rights-destroyed-the-continuing-cost-of-911"},"modified":"2021-09-12T15:30:45","modified_gmt":"2021-09-12T06:30:45","slug":"lives-lost-poverty-an-arms-race-rights-destroyed-the-continuing-cost-of-9-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=36778","title":{"rendered":"Lives lost, poverty, an arms race, rights destroyed \u2026 the continuing cost of 9\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The US has now spent $8 trillion over 20 years in its response to the attacks. But the true price has been more than financial<\/p>\n<p>Successive US administrations since 2001 have spent $8tn \u2013 that\u2019s to say $8,000bn or $8 million million \u2013 on what <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/george-bush\" title=\"\">George Bush<\/a>, its progenitor, termed the \u201cglobal war on terror\u201d. Joe Biden complains that Afghanistan alone cost the US $300m a day for 20 years. These mind-boggling numbers are mere estimates. Their sheer size is hard to comprehend. In any case, it\u2019s absurd to reckon the cost of <a href=\"https:\/\/watson.brown.edu\/costsofwar\/figures\/2021\/BudgetaryCosts\" title=\"\">a worldwide trauma purely in dollars and cents<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So how should a phenomenon that, looked at in the round, is the most epically damaging man-made calamity of recent times be properly measured? The overall cost of the \u201cwar on terror\u201d can be gauged in many different ways \u2013 in terms of international development, arms spending, environmental impacts, civil and human rights, the rule of law and the balance of power. Yet most striking is the cost expressed in ordinary lives lost and ruined.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/sep\/12\/lives-lost-poverty-an-arms-race-rights-destroyed-the-continuing-cost-of-911\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US has now spent $8 trillion over 20 years in its response to the attacks. But the true price has been more than financialSuccessive US administrations since 2001 have spent $8tn \u2013 that\u2019s to say $8,000bn or $8 million million \u2013 on what George Bush,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,487,709,2233,471,486,2291,61,2292,476,45,47,2052,42,943],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-al-qaida","category-arms-trade","category-george-bush","category-islamic-state","category-osama-bin-laden","category-september-11-2001","category-south-and-central-asia","category-tony-blair","category-uk-security-and-counter-terrorism","category-us-foreign-policy","category-us-news","category-uyghurs","category-world-news","category-yemen"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36779,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36778\/revisions\/36779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}