Necks Out, Chins Up

It's interesting to be in the work of fostering citizen courage in this time when a growing national theme seems to be: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

"Interesting" is, of course, sarcasm. What I'm really feeling is anger.

Are you listening to our "leaders"? To people seeking higher office? To political pundits? To newscasters? A fat percentage of what too many of them say is fear-mongering.

If you're watching/listening/reading -- and you're gullible -- there's a terrorist in your personal future. He's busy at the moment planting IEDs in the Green Zone, but he'll be here to get your mama, if we don't keep him busy in Iraq. Several of his fellow fanatics are trying to sneak onto your airplane flight. And there's a sleeper cell around the corner from you, hatching plots and bombs. This time they're going to take out your house.

Go to any airport in this country and you'll see how well our government is dealing with the terrible danger you're in. TSA staffers are wanding 90-year-old ladies in wheelchairs, and burrowing through their suitcases. Toddlers are on the no-fly list. Lipsticks are confiscated. It's all done with the highest seriousness.

It's a show of protection and it stirs the fear pot, giving us over and over an image of being in grave personal peril, needing Big Brother to make sure we're safe.

Here are stats on some things that actually killed American civilians between 1995 and 2005. You could call it a National Terror Alert Reality Check, and add colors at will for each level of risk:

SEVERE
Driving off the road: 254,419
Falling: 146,542
Accidental poisoning: 140,327

HIGH
Dying from work: 59,730
Walking down the street: 52,000
Accidental drowning: 38,302

ELEVATED
The flu: 19,415
Hernias: 16,742

GUARDED
Accidental gunshot: 8,536
Accidental electrocution: 5,171

LOW
Being shot by a police officer: 3,949
Terrorism: 3,147
Carbon monoxide in products: 1,554

I'm seeing pale blue or pink as the appropriate color for the risk level of dying from terrorism.

(All those repeats of "accidental" seem to be ruling out murders by the same means. Anybody got the stats on murders in those years?)

I want to tell the fear-mongers that we're more than 16 times more likely to die walking down the street than at the hands of a terrorist. But I suspect they know that.

Instilling fear in the populace is a fine tool for control. The unspoken subtext is, "Let us do whatever we want to the Constitution, let us start wars wherever it suits us, let us have your kids to send into the meat grinder -- because we're protecting you from Big Bad Wolves."

Actually, real protections are about as common as real assistance to post-Katrina New Orleans. American undercover teams carrying weapons have tested security at airport after airport, including one used by the actual highjackers -- the teams haven't been detected, much less stopped. Similar teams have gotten into nuclear power plants. Emergency services still can't cross-communicate on their networks, as the 9/11 Commission insisted they must. And every hour containers pile up in our ports, unexamined, containing who knows what.

Instead of working seriously on these things that could really help, we get the wanding of grammaw.

I see malfeasance in such security farces while invisible, necessary actions go undone. I see malfeasance in the insult to our national dignity of so much pandering to primitive, monster-in-the-closet fear.

Hey. This is the Home of the Brave. Good leaders would be reminding us of that, not treating us like frightened children. Instead, too many of our so-called leaders -- and I mean that across party lines -- are aligning with the goal of the terrorists -- to scare Americans spitless.

QED: fear-mongering is aiding and abetting the enemy.

Here's one citizen who won't play. I'm not scared and you shouldn't be either. We can stick our necks out and our chins up. We're tough, strong people, and we're not afraid.

But angry? Oh yeah. Be angry. Be very angry.

Comments

[BlueSun4886]

There is no way to prevent terrorists from attacking us if they are determined to do so - particularly if there is a steady supply of fanatics who are willing to die. We may catch this plot or that, but we won't bat 1000.

The only way to prevent attacks is by convincing the leaders of terrorist groups that they will lose more than they gain if they attack America.

Every day police face criminals in the street. Their primary safety comes from demonstrating to criminals that virtually anybody who kills a cop will be caught and punished - swiftly and harshly. Once an officer is shot, the entire force works find and punish the perp as soon as is humanly possible.

There are Islamic fanatics who are not afraid of death or capture. But, they are only footsoldiers. The leaders have goals and objectives, and for them to get killed or captured will destroy their movement, and defeat their cause.

We had one chance to teach this lesson to the world - when we had bin Laden and the bulk of his al Qaeda fighters surrounded in the caves of Tora Bora at the end of 2001. Had the Bush administration had the courage to put the entire might and resources of the United States into accomplishing the capture or destruction of al Qaeda then and there, the message would have been given to the rest of the world.

But, the administration merely used 9/11 and bin Laden as a pretext to follow their strategy for establishing an American military presence in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, so it could project power and achieve dominance over the region.

So, the message was not delivered when it would have been effective. The opposite message was sent instead - that a terrorist leader COULD strike at the United States and get away scot-free and prosper as a result.

And we still babble on about airport searches, telephone surveillance, and national drivers' licenses as if they can make us safe against an enemy that grows ever larger and more enraged.

[BlueSun4886]

Ann, you can add to your statistics these from the FBI (for what its worth). During the years 1995 - 2005 there were:

189,223 deaths from murder and willful manslaughter.

165,517 of these deaths were first degree murder.

109,949 were committed with firearms.

Note that these do NOT include the figures from 9/11.

Note also that during the 12 years of the Reagan and Bush41 administrations, all of these figures were climbing every year. During Clinton's administration, they went steadily down (there were 24,703 murders & manslaughters in 1993 and only 15,585 in 2000 despite the population growing by about 25 million people). Since Bush43 has entered office, all of these figures are again on the rise. The 2006 murder/manslaughter count is now up to 17,034.

It seems that Republican policies are far more a threat to American lives than all the foreign terrorists in the world.

[hopefulcynic]

Angry? Most def. But also scared, and not of al Qaeda or Iran, but of my own countrymen. Remember that, as tough and determined a people as we are, during The War we rounded up every Japanese-American we could find and tossed them into gulags for the duration. During the Red Scare we turned into Good Germans and ratted out our neighbors.
And now, in our post-apolyptic paranoia, we are told that indiscriminately wiretapping our own citizens is okay, that there are too many mosques incubating terrorists and ter-symps. We are also outsourcing a part of the so-called War on Terror to a private mercenary army led by a right-wing Christian fanatic doing the bidding of a right-wing Christian fanatic president (it almost sounds like the basis for a political thriller).
Oh yeah, I'm scared all right, because if we lose again in '08 (which we easily could) we'll have truly let the fox into the henhouse and God herself only knows what'll happen next...

[TommyMcCarthy]

Have to disagree with the premise. One thing that does not seem in short supply is anger. Replacing being afraid with being angry accomplishes nothing whatsoever­........tm

[ORSunshine]

Thanks for those rankings. I've been trying to find something like that for a while... I propose that we put up cushions on the edges of highways around the country (couldn't possibly cost the hundreds of billions of dollars we're spending on this war on terror). That would save more than 81 times the number of lives that the war on terror is supposedly saving!

[BlackJAC]

In all seriousness, the TSA searching the elderly is a wise move for the following reasons:
* The elderly lived in a simpler era when nobody locked their doors at night or thought twice about picking up a hitchhiker. This, combined with their general loneliness, already makes them a prime target for exploitation by con artists. It's not that much of a stretch to ask someone to carry a package for you onto the plane instead of for their credit card number.
* A wheelchair could easily be filled with plastic explosives, and the detonators hidden in bogus life-support gear like an oxygen tank.
* Prosthetic makeup techniques from as far back as 1988 can age a person thirty years. If this sounds farfetched, the Algerian FLN used to have its female members bleach their hair blonde, change into European clothing, and waltz right past the French military checkpoints to plant bombs because nobody thought white people could be a threat.

[timm0]

The only thing we have to fear are our leaders.

[mommadona]

"I see malfeasance in such security farces while invisible, necessary actions go undone. I see malfeasance in the insult to our national dignity of so much pandering to primitive, monster-in­-the-close­t fear.

Hey. This is the Home of the Brave. Good leaders would be reminding us of that, not treating us like frightened children. Instead, too many of our so-called leaders -- and I mean that across party lines -- are aligning with the goal of the terrorists -- to scare Americans spitless.

QED: fear-mongering is aiding and abetting the enemy."

I've been mad as hell at all these "empty suits" for a loooong time.

And the realization that BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES AND THEIR LEADERS ARE ON THE SAME PAGE WITH IT is doubly disgusting.

I want to be the proverbial 4 year old and ask over and over and over and over again...

"WHY?"
"WHY?""WHY?"
"WHY?""WHY?""WHY?"

[Ben Dixon]

Your right, I am angry. Angry that every time we try to use logical profiling while screening at airports the liberals cry racisim. I'm angry that when we try to enforce immigration laws and remove illegals so we know who is in this country that liberals cry foul. I'm angry that the leadership of this country won't admit the truth that we are in a clash of cultures with Muslim Arabs. Angry that this country hasn't put out a call to American's to server thier country in a time of need either in the military or law enforcement.