So, let's see:
1. The cost of September 11 damage alone was north of $100 billion.
2. The bad guys keep saying that they're going to do more damage to us in their holy war.
3. The bad guys are still largely a fringe movement in the Arab world, but one that had been picking up momentum though their terror tactics and penetration toward the mainstream via rogue governments like Iraq and Iran.
4. The bad guys are following the blueprint of Mohammad and early Islam by trying to kill all the infidels and have an ultimate objective of world domination.
5. It is clear the civilized world has not been serious about stopping this menace, only letting it grow and refusing to take decisive measures. Such measures can be reasonably assumed to only continue to fail.
6. We finally have a President who realizes that the problem isn't going to go away and that the cost of stopping it now, however long it takes, is a whole lot less than cost to fight a stronger enemy later, reduces the risk to our economy, and protects against threats to our long-term freedom.
So there are several inter-related questions that we each much answer:
A. Do we believe the short-term and long-term threat is serious? How could anyone answer other than, "yes?"
B. Do we believe that lesser measures than exterminating the threat could solve the threat? Not likely.
C. Are the proposed measures by the Bush administration likely to be effective in achieving the goal of exterminating the threat? Jury is out, but evidence to date suggests significant degradation of the threat already. But degradation of the threat is not enough, and it will take years to get the cockroaches. It will cost more than even this new $87 billion, but the cost pales in comparison to the risk of the ostrich-like tactics that opponents of the war on terror would have us take.
Given the "holy war" nature of the threat, we will never be able to stop vigilance until the Arab world is itself sufficiently freed of the menace to cleanse itself of the remaining cockroaches. Once that tide is turned, the cost will drop significantly. The Islamist fanatic warriors will be thwarted from within.
If you believe that Islam is truly a peaceful religion, the cleansing from within result is not hard to envision once these warriors are again only viewed as kooks and their platform of corrupt governments is taken away.
If you don't believe that the tide can be turned from within the Arab world once there is greater freedom for the people to chart their own destiny, then it is only more imperitive to beat the threat now before it becomes stronger, gets more economic and military power, and becomes a real threat to us.
