Interestingly, I have far more often seen people complain that the money used to go into space could be better used for (insert favorite use of taxpayer cash here). Their simpleminded idea is, of course, that the money could be seamlessly moved from the tens of thousands of people employed on one activity to the tens of thousands employed on the other without affecting anything. For example, it is not feasible to shut down Jet Propulsion Labs, Lockheed, Northrup, or any other space or military contractor and put their employees to work rebuilding houses in Louisiana for the same wages.

A couple of more points:

--The 9/11 attack cost New York alone $100 billion in the following years. I haven't seen a reliable figure for the economic effect on the whole country, so won't post numbers on that. But you can imagine. How much is it worth to stop another one? Remember, you don't even support military action in Afghanistan, never mind Iraq.

--The $2 trillion number for the war is, of course, crap.

--So is the idea that we could endlessly stop Islamist terror at our shores without any sort of major military action overseas, or for that matter, any action within our own borders that would in any way affect our privacy or freedom of movement.