Monday, February 20, 2006

Is Terrorism Really All that Bad?

THIS IS A REPOST DUE TO A PROBLEM WITH THE COMMENTS

I'll admit it's a problem. I'll accept that there are people who want to destroy this country, and that, you know, we should try to prevent our destruction. I'm just not sure terrorism should be the Bogeyman we fear. On 9/11 over three-thousand innocent people lost their lives. I just wonder how many more lives will be lost by government neglect and incompetence in the name of terrorism. I mean, we're spending billions upon billions of dollars to make the world hate us. Bush spent a 1.6 billion dollars in the U.S. for PR on promoting programs we don't want to try and sway our opinion. All the money being dumped into the Iraq "war" is like PR for the terrorists.

Three thousand lives lost is a lot. How many lives have we lost to neglect? There are the Katrina victims, the miners in Virginia and now pretty much any victim of the convoluted Medicaid plan. There's all the poor people who can't afford medical care. Any victims of future disasters that FEMA is unprepared for. And speaking of unprepared, there's that little matter of the bird flu. Suffice to say, we're woefully unprepared. Every day brings news that the epidemic is spreading. In 1918 we had a flu pandemic. About twenty-million people died.

So when I read about what the Department of Homeland Security is doing to protect us, it's not very comforting.

And when I think about the best ways to protect Americans, I'm less concerned about terrorists--who will never go away, by the way--than I am about a government that willfully ignores disasters it knows are coming.

2 comments:

VagabondLoafer said...

Living in the US is like sailing on a poorly maintained luxury cruise ship that’s taking on water fast. You know there’s an emergency and feel the need to act. You look to fellow passengers for help in stemming the leak or lowering lifeboats. But most passengers aren’t responding. They just stand there holding a shuffleboard thing-a-ma-bob in one hand and a boat-drink in the other. A few people are alarmed and can appreciate the situation, but probably not enough people to really make a difference.

The government has effectively layered and structured things so thoroughly as to make it impossible to accurately place blame or responsibility where it belongs. Every government office now comes equipped with a scapegoat as standard equipment -- a virtual Gordian knot of culpability.

As a nation we have more than enough knowledge and resources to handle any type of emergency situation, natural or man-made. We’ve certainly paid enough taxes to ensure our reasonable comfort and safety. They took our money so where is the benefit of government? Heck, I could run the whole show out of my home office and do a better job than the political bobble heads now charged with that same responsibility.

duboisist said...

A "problem" with the comments? Yeah, sure.
You made drew some nice connections between issues. If I can't comment on your blog, I'll just have to comment to CNN.com, the NYTimes.com or my New York Senators.