Adrift at Sea —Dan’s blog on dankim.com

There was an interesting article on www.csoonline.com about whether we should declare a victory in the War on Terrorism. It is an interesting argument if you consider it from a return on investment viewpoint. Since much of the additional money being spent on the military and the Department of Homeland Security isn’t going to increase our security by any significant amount, wouldn’t it be better spent increasing the actual quality of life of Americans as a whole.

Americans still face one of the largest deficits in history of the country. Some of the money could be spent on reducing the deficit, instead of additional security measures.

Health care is still a major issue for most Americans. Many Americans still need some form of affordable health care insurance, and given that a majority of personal bankruptcies are caused by health care costs, it might make sense to address this issue. It can be argued that nine of the ten leading causes of death in the are medical in nature, and research into these causes would go a long way to reducing the death toll from these causes.

The last of the top ten causes of death is accidents. A majority of these are automotive in nature, and a majority of the automotive accidents are drunk-driving related. We could pass legislation to greatly reducethe number of deaths due to drunk driving by requiring ignition interlock systems in the vehicles of drunk drivers and passing severe penalties for people who help them circumvent the devices.

Wouldn’t it make sense to make these simple changes, given how many lives could be saved. Far more people die per month to the top ten causes of death than died in the all of the terrorist attacks on the US combined. This is not to say that we, as a country, shouldn’t be vigilant and keep an eye on security, but that the vastly increased amounts of money might be better spent elsewhere.

I do believe that September 11, 2001 was a tragic and unprovoked attack on this country. But, I also believe that we need to set our priorities to do the most good for the greatest number of people.

Here is the argument from the article:

Let’s assume, first of all, that the ultimate goal of security is to prevent the loss of lives. In this risk management approach, then, the first thing to look at is the leading causes of death in the United States. The total number of deaths from all attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, was approximately 2,988, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The top 10 causes of other deaths in the United States in 2001 were the following.

1. Heart disease: 700,142
2. Cancer: 553,768
3. Stroke: 163,538
4. Chronic lower respiratory disease: 123,013
5. Accidents: 101,537
6. Diabetes: 71,372
7. Pneumonia/flu: 62,034
8. Alzheimer’s disease: 53,852
9. Kidney disease: 39,480
10. Suicide: 30,622

The 9/11 deaths were classified within a category called assaults/homicides, which was the 13th leading cause of death at 20,308.

The next thing to look at is spending. As I write this article, the president has just released his proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2006. The projected budget for the Department of Defense is $419.3 billion, and the projected budget for the Department of Homeland Security is $34.2 billion. Since 2001, defense spending has risen by more than 40 percent, and the Department of Homeland Security budget has roughly tripled. But even those billions of dollars fail to tell the whole story. Other agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Transportation, also spend money in pursuit of homeland security. The Department of Energy spends money on nuclear weapons’ activities. And since 2001, Congress has approved billions of dollars for military and reconstruction costs in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not included as part of the Defense budget.

CSOs know how to best allocate available resources to guard against the most likely threats. We should be vocal about the need to apply that same logic to our nation’s security.

To be sure, there has not been another terrorist attack in the United States since 2001, so presumably all that additional money has prevented other lives from being taken because of terrorism. But what about the other leading causes of death? Could the money spent on additional defense and homeland security have saved more lives if it had been applied in other areas?

For example, eight of the top 10 causes of death are health-related. If one classifies suicide as a mental health problem, then nine of the top 10 causes of death are health-related. Could those billions of dollars have saved more lives if they had been spent on health research or on making health care available to a larger percentage of the population?

Or what about the other top 10 cause of death: accidents? Consisting primarily of automobile accidents and work-related deaths, accidents amounted to more than 100,000 deaths in 2001. In fact, more people were killed in motor vehicle accidents each month in the year 2001 (and still are) than were killed in the 9/11 attacks. Could more lives have been saved if those billions of dollars had been spent increasing automobile and traffic safety?