July 10, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

FEARING FEAR ITSELF

To hear right-wing pundits tell it, there's just nothing scarier than terrorism. Since nineteen guys took some box cutters, hijacked some airplanes, and crashed into some buildings we're supposed to live in abject fear. Even more, we're supposed to accept "preemptive" war, torture, and trashing of our civil liberties. There are lots of things in the world to be a afraid of, but terrorism is pretty far down the list. This is a good commentary by Paul Campos is at www.commondreams.org:

Nothing better illustrates this than Ignatius’ claim that the British car bombing plots “remind us of our vulnerability to terrorist attack.” What they remind anyone not already in thrall to the cultural hysteria Ignatius promotes is that all the “terrorists” discovered in America over the past few years were, like the British would-be bombers, thoroughly pathetic figures, who collectively proved themselves incapable of blowing up a phone booth.

In the two hours or so I’m guessing it took Ignatius to crank out yet another 800 words of substance-free alarmism festooned with platitudes about the need for “unity,” about 350 Americans died. Since Sept. 11, 2001, approximately 14 million Americans have died.

Some of these people died agonizing deaths on emergency room floors because they didn’t have health insurance. A quarter-million were killed in car crashes. Around 200,000 were shot to death. Several thousand died of acute alcohol poisoning.

In theory, most of these deaths were preventable. In practice, only some of them were preventable at anything like a reasonable cost. Here’s a question: What would be the optimal number of deaths per year in the United States caused by less-than-ideal medical care, or car crashes, or gunshot wounds, or alcohol poisoning?

I’m sure Ignatius understands why anyone who answers “zero” is saying something nonsensical. So why does he continue to write similar nonsense about terrorism?