The Dead, the Dollars, the Drones: 9/11 Era by the Numbers

[DarkPast]

Ever since the Twin Towers fell, the United States has been at war. The costs of that decade of conflict have been unimaginably high: trillions of dollars spent, hundreds of thousands of lives lost. The numbers are almost too big to grasp, let alone quantify. The graphics below are our incomplete attempt to do so. These figures are also a way of showing the radical transformation the U.S. military has undergone during the 9/11 era. Drones, once an afterthought in tactical plans, have become a central component, flying millions of hours in combat. Special operations forces have added tens of thousands to their ranks. Bomb-resistant armored vehicles, absent from the American arsenal in 2001, are now a primary means of battlefield transportation — even as Afghanistan’s militants find new ways to render them irrelevant.

An interesting article by Wired, be sure to check out the very nice graph they have provided here:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/dangerroom_911toll_0909

[thefinalmarch]

But hasn't the US constantly been at war or otherwise engaged in military operations since WWII?

[DarkPast]

That's very much true, but the main point of the article is to show the character of the war has changed over the decades. The increase in the number of Special forces operatives, mine-resistant APCs and hunter drones is huge - and expensive. All that military spending, combined with the ever-rising expenses that hail all the way back to the Reagan era, now seems to have come back to bite them. What makes it particularly sickening is how they're still effectively taking money from the future generations to fund current imperialist wars. A fearsome picture of just how powerful the military-industrial complex has become.

As an aside, notice how the center of the insurgency seems to have moved from Iraq to Afghanistan.