First let me say that I believe that violence is almost never justified
and that terrorism has never(?) served the political purposes it was
intended for. I believe that terrorism is a crime, not an act of war. A
heinous premeditated crime, but different only in scale from e.g. armed
robbery and murder.
I'd like to draw a different perspective on events like 9-11 and the
London bombings.
2005, London, England: ~50 killed, ~700 injured
<http://news.google.com/news?q=london+bombing>
2004, Madrid, Spain: ~200 killed, ~1500 injured
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_bombing>
2002, Kuta, Bali: ~200 killed, ~200 injured
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Bali_terrorist_bombing>
2001, NY & DC, USA: ~3000 killed.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11%2C_2001_attacks>
2001-2004, 2nd Intifada ~1000 israelis killed, ~6700 injured
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Aqsa_Intifada>
~2400 Palestinians killed, ~22,000
injured.
2000-2005, A few hundred killed and many more injured, worldwide.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents#2000s>
Perhaps 7500 people killed by terrorist acts in the first five years of
the 21 century. A substantial number, outrage is certainly justified.
The governments of the world should be aggressively seeking justice for
all these dead. Here's some other crimes that ought to receive
proportional outrage:
2003-2005, Iraq ~1950 occupation forces killed, ~13,300 wounded
<http://icasualties.org> ~23,000 Iraqi civilians killed, wounded
unknown <http://www.iraqbodycount.net/>
2002, USA (just 1 year) ~12,000 gun deaths.
<http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm>
~43,000 auto deaths.
<http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/>
~158,000 lung cancer deaths
<http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_05acc.pdf>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung_cancer>
I think that our administration and the american media don't have a
good grasp of risk/reward and cost/benefit issues. Every 4 months, year
in and year out, 3000 americans are shot to death, usually by
americans, often with their own guns. That's a 9-11 disaster three
times a year. Almost four times that number die on the roads, many of
those deaths preventable by improved enforcement of existing laws.
Using terrorism as justification, the Patriot Acts are shredding our
constitutional protections.
Using terrorism as justification, this administration has coerced our
children into committing torture, kidnapping, and other war crimes.
Using terrorism as justification, in 2006 the Federal government will
spend more than $600 Billion,
<http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm> about half of the federal
budget, "fighting terror", at home, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq.
The numbers are so enormous that I can barely grasp them. If a billion
is a thousand million (I think so) then we're spending $2000 each for
every child, woman, and man in the country, to protect us from a threat
that is vanishingly small compared to the real threats americans face.
Our government budgets almost nothing for real security like education,
child welfare, consumer safety, public health, gun safety,
transportation safety....the list goes on.
We'd all be a lot more secure if this country wasn't full of
gun-totin', cigaret smokin', drunks in SUVs. All the evidence shows
that occupying Iraq makes americans less secure. I can promise you that
the american soldiers in Iraq would feel a lot safer in lower
manhattan.
It's a crime that we've been made to fear the unlikely, while blithely
ignoring the obvious.
Taryn <ornae.com>
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