The numbers I heard today are that the terrorist operation cost about $500,000 to pull off (the terrorists actually sent back unused funds, money orders of $5,000 and 5,400!!). Let's add in a fudge factor of 3X and say it cost $1.5 million to pull off 9/11.
The financial damage number I heard today, total, was $105 billion. Billion with a "B." So it cost $1.5 million to destroy $105 billion + 7,000 lives, throw an economy into a tailspin and change the way the world (the western world) thinks about everyday life, planes from the sky, the person next to you.
It struck me that a bullet, which costs less than a dollar to manufacture, can rip through the soft tissues and the major organs of a human body and destroy 15, 20, 30, 60 years of life and experiences and spirituality which took that many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars (think of all the unpaid parental counseling time, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. in addition to actual cash outlays for music lessons, ballet, Little League team fees and uniform purchases, tennis lessons and racquets, school tuition, professional training) to fashion and create. My wife and I have spent thousands of hours on our kids, from pregnancy classes to the mad dash to the hospital, to play groups, fun groups, pre school, school commuting, after school activities, vacations, college prep, etc. And so has everyone else.
Creation and happiness and joy and life is such a fragile construct, and it's so cheap and easy and tawdry to destroy it. Completely.
I don't have an upbeat conclusion to this series of statements, I think I've heard enough of them, strung together almost since the first crash into the North Tower. For me it's enough simply to try to understand the basic horrible truth of what occurred almost four weeks ago.
Kb |
