How do wars affect US Government and the Citizens?

SOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com

    The $5 Trillion War on Terror, Mark Thompson,  
Five Fold Increase in Terrorism since 9/11, Ewan MacAskill

The Wars that we have fought since 9/11 have evidently not benefited our government or our citizens in any way whatsoever, we have been losing trillions of dollars while putting our nation’s security in deeper jeopardy than it was before. Before our interventions overseas, Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon projected the initial cost of the future wars to be somewhere between 200 to 300 billion dollars, which was inaccurate by over 5.7-5.8 trillion dollars. That payment includes the additional 1 trillion dollars that will continually be paid until 2020. According to  TIME Costs of War, this enormous figure has hurt the citizens the most, the wars abroad have cost each citizen in America 16,000 dollars while costing the average family around 64,000 dollars. While also killing thousands of innocent people overseas due to “Collateral Damage”, which in itself has only made the threat of terrorism worse since 9/11. The money taken away from each citizen would have benefited our nation immensely, the money our government spent would have granted Americans more spending power. These wasted taxpayer dollars could have potentially created thousands of more jobs while overall strengthening our nation’s economy and dollar. These wasted American tax dollars were spent on weapons which fueled the fire of terrorism while profiting the companies in the military industrial complex, and these companies then put these obscene amounts of money into private bank accounts and stocks which would not aid the strengthening of the American currency or economy as much as having the individual American citizens spending those same dollars back into the economy which then benefits our economy more than a few oligopolies profiting. 

The so called war on terror has in fact not been what the American government and citizens intended it be at all, our fight towards global terrorism has started multiple proxy wars while enabling terrorist organizations across the world to recruit more fighters. Global terrorism has increased almost 6 fold since our military interactions, and our interventions only eliminated 7% of terrorist groups that we intended to take out. According to Guardians Increase of Terrorism Since 9/11, in 2000 there were 3,361 deaths globally, although in 2103 there were 17,958 deaths, not to mention there were over 437,000 murders globally. This should make one think about whether our strategy towards international terrorism should continue.

Future Research Question:  Who benefits from Wars?