What About the Fact That Terrorists Want to Murder Us All?

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/what-about-the-fact-that-terrorists-want-to-murder-us-all/276825/



In "The Irrationality of Giving Up This Much Liberty to Fight Terror," I challenged Americans to assess the actual threat that terrorism poses. Yes, it's very scary, psychologically, and every terrorist attack is awful. But going back to 1999, an interval that happens to include the most successful terrorist attack in U.S. history, radical Islamists have killed around 3,000 people in America -- whereas guns killed roughly 364,000 people, drunk driving killed roughly 150,000 people, and food poisoning reliably kills roughly 3,000 people every year. Americans are far more likely to be killed on their morning commute than in a terrorist attack. And for that reason, I argued, what we're being asked to give up to fight terrorism is irrational and unreasonable. When confronted by far deadlier threats, Americans are much less willing to cede civil liberties and privacy.

My colleague Jeffrey Goldberg, writing at Bloomberg View, expresses partial agreement with my mindset. He believes "resiliency is the key to successful counterterrorism," and notes his discomfort with a government that appears ready "to alter the nature of our open society" by adopting laws and policies "that would allow for the creation of a comprehensive surveillance state." This is significant. If most Americans insisted on resiliency as the appropriate response to terrorism, and rejected fundamental changes like the construction of a surveillance state, we'd be better off.

But Goldberg says that I understate the danger terrorists pose, because I consider only the actual murders they've succeeded in perpetrating, and neglect to mention their much bigger ambitions:

The fear of terrorism isn't motivated solely by what terrorists have done, but what terrorists hope to do. Although it's true that bathtub accidents account for a too-large number of deaths, it isn't true that bathtubs are engaged in a conspiracy with other bathtubs to murder ever-larger numbers of Americans. We know for certain, however, that al-Qaeda, its offshoots, and other organizations and individuals in the Islamist orbit seek unconventional weapons that would allow them to kill a far-larger number of Americans than died on Sept. 11.

[cali]

1. thanks for posting this. it's a good read

[xchrom]

2. ...

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. And . . .

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.
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If the USA stopped messing with other countries,

Maybe they wouldn't mess with the USA?

Ah, probably not -

There are too many parents, children, relatives, friends of them who have suffered/died, or had a loved one suffer/die at the end of a USA attack/invasion.

Payback is gonna last a while -

continue forever if the USA don't change it's "foreign" policy pretty quickly.

Gonna be payback for sure.

(sigh)

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