Wanted Dead or Alive

Last week we ventured Outside the Box when discussing energy independence and its affect upon on economic stability and national security.

Let’s stay Out of the Box and look at the cost of and how we approach war, as we know it today.

The cost of the Iraq and Afghan conflicts is a subject of great debate. Estimates from leading research agencies vary from $2 trillion to $6 trillion and above.  Note: these numbers do not include significant expenditures by our allies. Regardless, pick a number somewhere in between… say $4 trillion.

Those same leading research firms also estimate the number of enemy combatants that we killed. Those figures range from 20,000 to 60,000. Granted, the total death toll is much higher than herein reported, but the majority of casualties were non-combatant civilians. For our purposes, let’s assume we killed 50,000 enemy soldiers.

Now grab a big calculator and prepare to be amazed at "what we got" for our money -  not to mention the incalculable price paid in blood by our brave fighting forces.

The Math: $4 trillion divided by 50,000 equals $80 million. That’s right! The average cost per kill (or capture) is $80 million (at the very minimum)! To make matters worse, the problem still persists. Terrorism is as strong as ever.

The only hope of success is for the peoples of the Middle East to defend themselves. But have we been successful in that charge? Of course not. We have failed miserably. They remain defenseless, inadequately armed, unorganized, and living in constant fear. 

But what if the allied coalition (US, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, et al) simply started by putting a big bounty on the head of each enemy combatant? Do you think that many ISIS members would knowingly show their faces (bearing a $2 million, wanted Dead-or-Alive price tag) to an angry, armed and motivated populace? Membership in Club ISIS would unravel faster than a Barack Obama promise.

Arm the people, train them, and pay them. In short order ISIS will do all of the following: turn upon themselves, retreat into seclusion, and disband. This mess would be over in no time. The same could be applied to any and all terrorist organizations.

I can hear the nay sayers now. "Oh golly gee, that wouldn't follow the rules of the Geneva Convention". My response to that is "when they start playing by the rules, we'll start playing by the rules". In the meantime, it's simply "Wanted - Dead or Alive".

Think about it!

As always, your thoughts are welcome.

Scott Sangalli

The Great Divide

scott@sangalli-inc.com