From a purely military point of view, they had one death and one injured man taken prisoner. They probably spent several hundred, perhaps several thousand dollars, at most, buying weapons and materials for their bombs. It’s unlikely they had a support network backing them up we can go after.

Over and above the dead and injured due to the bombing and the subsequent pursuit, scores of victims required expensive surgery, and their families will suffer economically from their wounds for the rest of their lives. The city of Boston suffered (according to an estimate I heard on TV right after the bomber was taken into custody) $300 million in lost business alone due to the city-wide lockdown. You can probably add to that the expenses for all the police activity from all the agencies involved in the manhunt. Just think of fuel for the vehicles and the overtime pay for all the public safety officers involved.

It probably ripples out from there. Problems with transportation shutdowns, lost advertising revenue from the TV networks, salary cutbacks, it goes on and on. I’d be willing to bet the cost to the nation was at least a half billion dollars, although I can only guess.

I bring this up not because I want to nit-pick, or quibble about whether it was all worth it (of course it was worth it!) but because it illustrates how vulnerable we are as a society. A handful of thugs, if they are willing to risk it all, can cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Just think, one destroyed airliner can have a replacement cost of hundreds of millions, over and above the other expenses. When we strike back successfully, our victory is only symbolic.

And think of the increased costs in insurance, security measures, time and resources lost due to those security measures. We spend on security even when there is no emergency, and like all military expenditure, it it terribly inefficient and expensive.

The terrorists will always win, and they know it.