After reading the Cato report about terrorism [1], I suddenly realized why Republicans have been so gung-ho to declare “war” against terrorism: because it’s the easiest war in town. The odds that any American will die from a terrorist attack are microscopic, so what better thing to declare “war” against than something that is extremely unlikely to happen anyway? It’s a bit like declaring war against fatal tooth decay or war against bathtub drownings.
Much, much harder (politically, socially and scientifically) is to declare war against the things that actually kill Americans in large numbers: cigarettes, obesity (heart disease, stroke, etc.), auto accidents, drunk driving, cancer, etc. Unlike terrorism, many of these causes of death, though significantly more lethal than terrorism, have many large and powerful corporations advocating (and paying very large bribes…er, I mean, political contributions) on their behalf: tobacco companies, fast food and soft drink companies, auto makers, liquor distributors and tavern owners, etc. Compared to getting tobacco off store shelves, McDonalds to serve more healthy food, or drunk drivers off our roads, declaring “war” against a tiny number of terrorists in Third-World countries is trivially easy. Plus, as an added benefit, foaming up nationwide fear against a mostly fictional threat enables the Republican-controlled Congress to vacuum obscenely huge amounts of public money out of social programs (i.e., Democrat pockets) and pour it into defense programs (i.e., Republican pockets). And if it disrupts the oil supply and drives oil company profits through the ceiling, so much the better.
No wonder Republicans claim to be winning the war on terrrorism despite every objective measure of failure: from the standpoint of what they have personally gained politically and financially, they have exceeded their wildest dreams. No wonder they were so eager to enter this war.
Print this post [2]
[3]