President Bush is going to send more than 20,000 more troops into Iraq and spend billions of more dollars to carry on a hideous war. [1] Why? To protect Americans from terrorists, he tells us. Bush convinced Americans to invade Iraq by accusing Iraq of being responsible for the 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 Americans. This argument suggests that the deaths of 3,000 people is a horrible thing.
Whenever 3,000 people die, it is a horrible thing. It might justify hundreds of billions of dollars, though certainly not the diversion of money from programs that save equal numbers of lives. 3,000 deaths justifies the deaths of more than 3,000 soldiers, we are told. I don’t agree with this. The political party that argues that there are clear moral rules (the Republicans) isn’t convincing me.
Does it make a difference that 3,000 innocent Americans die on the same day rather than over the course of a year? I wouldn’t think so. A death is a death, in my opinion. And 3,000 deaths are 3,000 deaths.
Therefore, shouldn’t the 16,000 murders that occur every year [2] in the US require a response five times bigger than the invasion of Iraq? That’s 3,000 every ten weeks. Shouldn’t it require focused efforts to protect these victims? Shouldn’t it require a revamping of our entire criminal justice system, especially our prison system, which so often trains criminals to be even more vicious, rather than preparing them for ready for release? Where is our war on criminal violence? It is certainly justified by looking at the widespread death caused by murderers.
Or what should we do about a silent killer that kills 1,500 Americans every day. [3] That’s 3,000 every two days. Shouldn’t that get our focused and unrelenting national attention? Lance Armstrong discussed this killer today: cancer. What are our leaders doing about cancer? Worse than nothing. Listen to Armstrong, a cancer survivor who has dedicated his energies toward developing cures to cancer:
Cancer will impact one in two men and one in three women in their lifetime. It is devastating and it is pervasive. In fact, every year 1.3 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer.
The medical advances achieved by our nation’s best doctors and researchers have given us reasons to hope. But in spite of this vast body of knowledge, 1,500 people will die from cancer today and tomorrow and the day after that, often because the care they needed to prevent cancer or survive it was not available to them.
However, our nation’s second-leading killer did not make the list of issues that our candidates used to get people to the polls last November. Anyone with a television or access to a newspaper can list the ballot box issues that occupied our candidates’ attention — they range from bickering to very real concerns and challenges.
The political ads didn’t tell voters that earlier in the year funding for cancer research was cut for the first time in 30 years. Nor did they explain that a lack of funding slows the pace of scientific discovery and the development of treatments. Our candidates did not mention the decrease in funding for programs that provide information and screening to people who need these services. I think this is unwise, but it is what our government has done this past year. I waited patiently for an explanation, some clarification or justification. Ten million cancer survivors deserve an answer. We didn’t get one.
[Emphasis added].
One small segment of the annual lethal cancers, those dying from colon cancer in Wisconsin, equals the total number 9/11 deaths. It happened this year and it will happen again next year. Grumpypilgrim (a Wisconsin resident) wrote about this in an earlier comment: [4]
To put 3,000 in perspective (the number that died five years ago from the worst terrorist attack in US history — an outlying data point from a statistical perspective): that’s how many people die annually in Wisconsin from colon cancer. I don’t see anyone in Washington calling for a “war” on colon cancer in Wisconsin.
Bush and his supporters are utterly convinced that all abortions are murder, they say, because killing is killing, they say. But that is not clear at all-just ask 59% of the people from South Dakota [5]. And what about failing to focus the National energies and resources to find cures to cancer? What is it when you cut funding for cancer research when 1,500 people are dying every day? Isn’t that murder? If you’re looking for moral clarity, is there a better example?
Or how about deaths caused by motor vehicle crashes? Every four weeks there are 3,000 such deaths [6]. Many of those people could be saved through lower speed limits and better mass transit. Every two weeks, alcohol wipes out more than 3,000 people. [7] Every three days, [6] poor diet and physical inactivity kill more than 3,000 people. Diesel pollution [8] causes 3,000 premature deaths every year in California alone. We can prevent many or most of these deaths without expensive weapons and without having our soldiers blown up half way around the world.
3,000 is 3,000. No discussion of Iraq is complete without a concurrent discussion of other ways we could save comparable numbers of lives. Iraq is [9], and always was, a domestic issue [10]. Except for those people who refuse to think. [11]
Or maybe a problem is not a real problem unless you can pretend to deal with it by A) making criminals out of pregnant women or B) destroying large numbers of Iraqi civilians with bombs and bullets. Is there better proof that this nation is afflicted with innumeracy [12]?
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