The good professor is surely right that the number of Americanscocusflute wrote:Nonsense. Prof. John Mueller has this to say regarding security and airline terrorism. Many of us fly with our flutes so this is relevant to the issue. And it is not sectarian politics.They're trying to keep us alive.
I've flown a good deal in countries where
there was a terrorist threat. Our security
is way too relaxed.
"Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is "when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, or accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.
"Accordingly, it would seem to be reasonable for those in charge of our safety to inform the public about how many airliners would have to crash before flying becomes as dangerous as driving the same distance in an automobile. It turns out that someone has made that calculation: University of Michigan transportation researchers Michael Sivak and Michael Flannagan, in an article last year in American Scientist, wrote that there would have to be one set of September 11 crashes a month for the risks to balance out. More generally, they calculate that an American’s chance of being killed in one nonstop airline flight is about one in 13 million (even taking the September 11 crashes into account). To reach that same level of risk when driving on America’s safest roads — rural interstate highways — one would have to travel a mere 11.2 miles.
"Thus far at least, terrorism is a rather rare and — in appropriate, comparative context — not a very destructive phenomenon. However, the enormous sums of money being spent to deal with the threat have in part been diverted from other, possibly more worthy, endeavors. The annual budget for the Department of Homeland Security, for example, now tops $30 billion, while state and local governments spend additional billions.
"For instance, measures that delay airline passengers by half an hour could cost the economy $15 billion a year, calculates economist Roger Congleton.
"Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): “Calculate the odds of being harmed by a terrorist! It’s still about as likely as being swept out to sea by a tidal wave."
..........
killed in terrorist attacks since the 60s is low, averaged over all the years.
However this counts for little, as the pace increased extraordinarily
on 9/11, when 3000 people were killed in a few hours. Obviously
the security-response was to that extraordinarily
accelerated rate of fatalities.
It makes no sense to calibrate our security response to the fatality
rate that preceded 9/11, anymore than it would have to calibrate our
military response to Japanese aggression to the fatality rate that
preceded Pearl Harbor. Or to average that day's losses
over the last 40 or fifty years and observe that death at
the hands of Japanese military amounted
on average to no more than lives lost to bee stings or shark attacks
or whatever, so why spend millions on battle ships?
The argument is based on a fallacious 'thus far.'
'Thus far at least, terrorism is a rather rare and — in appropriate, comparative context — not a very destructive phenomenon.'
It ain't
'thus far' no more, sports fans. The terrorists have demonstrated
the will and the ability to kill thousands of us in a couple of hours.
That was the mortality rate that mattered, realistically.
If the risk of airlines-used-as-projectiles equaled that of traffic
related fatalities (one Sept 11 type episode a month, which
the terrorists certainly could arrange without stricter
security than we had in place),
that would mean 45,000 domestic airline related deaths a year,
3,500 a month, more or less, which would mean the end of the airline
airline industry and air travel, economic chaos, and a
far more profound change to life as we know it
than was putting in place the level of airline security that is already in
place throughout a good deal of the world.
Not to mention the deaths themselves!
No country on earth that faces this threat just informs
the public that it's more cost effective to let the terrorists have
their way with airlines. Nor could a government that offered
them that option survive.
The McCain quote lacks a date--one supposes that JMc
is citing the effects of tightened security, not criticizing it.
The absence of the date is troubling. Grateful for citations
so we can read the whole piece you quote.
To put my cards on the table, I think our failed policies
in the middle east must be rectified before we can
win the 'war on terror.' But neither political party is willing to
address that effectively. Meanwhile
I really don't want to die the way the folks did on
9/11. Call me irrational, I can't help it, but I think
I speak for most everybody on this side of the Big Puddle.
As the security is there and we're paying for it, and the threat
is there too,
the security might as well be arranged to actually
work. I think it should be at least as tight as it was in India.
To the people involved, I don't mind the nuisance.
I thank anybody who is doing what she can to
keep me in one piece.
