The unleashing of the U.S. military abroad also triggered a tidal wave of funding for the traditional military-industrial complex. Before 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had promised a leaner, meaner war fighting machine, with fewer soldiers bearing better high-tech weapons at less cost. That vision was quickly replaced with the biggest build-up of military hardware since the 1980s as the Pentagon’s budget more than doubled to nearly $700 billion – about as much as it spends on Social Security – in less than a decade.
The expansive overseas war on terror was coupled with its domestic equivalent – an explosion in domestic spending on anti-terror activities. It included beefed up federal bureaucracies to protect home land security; massive spending on contractors to provide services ranging from protecting computers from hackers to protecting ports from smugglers to protecting air travelers from hijackers. It also included, at least for a time, hefty grants to state and local governments for first responders in local police and fire departments, which was doled out, as federal grants often are, to every Congressional district in the country with only passing regard to the ones most likely to face a terrorist threat.
Homeland security budgets have seen a similar-sized increase, more than tripling in the past decade to an estimated $48.1 billion this year. This includes $5.5 billion for the Transportation Security Administration, which didn’t exist prior to 9/11. The U.S. has spent in excess of $600 billion on homeland security in the past decade, according to Chris Hellman of the National Priorities Project.
“The choice the U.S. walked through after 9/11 was the door to war,” said Neta Crawford, a professor of political science at Boston University, who coordinated the war cost project. “The U.S. saw it as an act of war. But international law sees it as a crime. To treat terrorism as a crime would have entailed a much more intensified law enforcement response.
