Time To Toss The 9/11 Blather!
How Scared of Terrorism Should You Be? Not very. Do you even know how many Americans have been killed in terrorist attacks inside the United States since the September 11, 2001, attack? You are four times more likely to be killed by a lightning bolt than by a terror attack. Ronald Baily, a science correspondent at Reason.com has broken down the statistical basis for our post-9/11 terror hysteria.
It turns out that peanuts and bathtub drownings (the non-waterboard variety) are by far more dangerous to Americans than terrorists. “On this 10th anniversary, we will certainly remember those who died so tragically. But we should also recognize that terrorism is a hollow threat to which we should not surrender one iota of our liberties,” opines Dr. Baily.
FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law experts, Time Magazine, and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”.
MS at The Economist posts:
“JEFFREY GOLDBERG disparages a Los Angeles Times piece in which an expert makes the familiar point that people’s reactions to terrorist attacks are overblown, given that (outside the Muslim world) roughly the same number of people die drowning in bathtubs as die in terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals. Mr Goldberg thinks this is a specious comparison: unlike bathtub drownings, terrorist attacks…
“… can have a profound effect on society and the economy. The deaths of ten people in bathtub accidents won’t cause people to fear leaving their homes; but imagine the impact of 10 deaths in a terrorist bombing of a shopping mall, or a movie theater. And imagine if it happens more than once. The economic impact could be devastating…And consider the impact of terrorism on the Constitution, and on our collective self-conception as an open and free society. Just look at the stress placed on our constitutional freedoms by 9/11.
“James Fallows correctly responds that Mr Goldberg is confusing an is with an ought.* Precisely because people are disproportionately and unwisely likely to respond to terrorist attacks by declining to leave their homes and by acceding to curtailment of civil liberties, it’s the duty of right-thinking (and statistically literate) people everywhere to persuade them not to overreact.”
Fear of Terrorism Makes People Stupid writes Washington’s Blog –
Sociologists from four major research institutions investigated why so many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it became obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
The researchers found, as described in an article in the journal Sociological Inquiry (and re-printed by Newsweek):
The inconsistencies of terror & religion
Western democracies proclaim that in politics they keep church and state separate but in reality this is not always true. How many of our nation’s policies and laws have religious overtones and are a result of the majority party’s religious affiliations?
It seems virtually impossible for any average politician to act contrary to his or her religious background.
ARUN GANDHI | WASHINGTON POST –
The same rule applies to terrorists. In reality terrorists are quite simply mass murders. But when an individual commits murder we don’t associate religion with the act because the murder is an act of passion and not an act motivated by religion.
Terrorism, like politics, has its roots in religious beliefs and individuals, or collectives, are motivated by their warped understanding of their religion. But, whether this justifies branding a nefarious act of terrorism as “Islamic” or “Christian” is debatable. We all know that religious scriptures are ambiguously written so that anyone can interpret them to mean whatever they want it to mean. This should not be construed to mean that the essence of any religion is evil. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, misinterpretation of religion is the act of an insane individual or a group.
