Is 9/11 Responsible For US Economic Woes?

The hundreds of billions of dollars that have been poured into the sinkhole of perpetual war contribute substantially to the nation’s enervating fiscal woes. But the problem isn’t the squandering of resources. It’s that we’re stuck in a dour, wartime mind-set that in many ways resembles clinical depression.
Eugene Robinson, Post-9/11 permanent state of war should have ended long ago, 9/8/2011

As if this is the way to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

This may be the beginning of a new meme, a new narrative leading up to the 2012 election in one more attempt to blame Bush and exonerate Obama.

Not everyone is buying it.


Charles Krauthammer warned the same day not to exaggerate the responsibility of our response to 9/11 for our economic situation or downplay our accomplishments:

The new conventional wisdom on 9/11: We have created a decade of fear. We overreacted to 9/11 — al-Qaeda turned out to be a paper tiger; there never was a second attack — thereby bankrupting the country, destroying our morale and sending us into national decline.

...Perhaps, says the new conventional wisdom, but these exertions have bankrupted the country and led to our current mood of despair and decline.

Rubbish. The total cost of “the two wars” is $1.3 trillion. That’s less than 1/11th of the national debt, less than one year of Obama deficit spending. During the golden Eisenhower 1950s of robust economic growth averaging 5 percent annually, defense spending was 11 percent of GDP and 60 percent of the federal budget. Today, defense spending is 5 percent of GDP and 20 percent of the budget. So much for imperial overstretch.

Robinson's employer, The Washington Post, also notes that the math just doesn't support such a claim and tells us in an editorial Don’t underestimate what America has achieved since 9/11:

Over the decade, the United States devoted a far smaller share of its gross domestic product to defense than it did throughout the Cold War. Although it would be nice if those resources could go toward something more peaceful and constructive, the spending is not the cause of America’s economic difficulty. And if the U.S. foreign policy establishment hasn’t paid enough attention to the rise of China or the spread of AIDS, that shouldn’t be blamed entirely on the fight against terrorism; a great power will always have to do more than one thing at a time.

Unfortunately, you can be sure that these rebuttals are not going to quash this new meme. This claim is only beginning to get more exposure as the 2012 election approaches.

Hat tips: JK and DG

Technorati Tag: 9/11.