> The threat of attack at any time. Constant fear. All so people could build their little empires inside the military and intelligence communities.
I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMDs. Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it.
I fully accept a lot of mistakes were made during the cold war, and I also deplore the expensive, ineffective and unnecessary overreach by western intelligence agencies, but the threats they were and are purporting to defend us from are very real. Some of our responses to those threats have been mistaken and unnecessary, but it certainly does not follow that those threats don't exist and don't need to be responded to.
> Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it.
Seriously?
There ought to be something analogously to Godwin’s law to declare discussions lost after this class of arguments.
To answer in kind: "I'd like to ask how you would explain the proportionality of the respond to the families of the tens to hundreds of thousand civilian casualties[1] in the Irak war." OR "[…] explain the justice and civility of the 'war against terror' to the hundreds (?) of innocent prisoners in Guantanamo bay." OR even "[…] explain the trillion dollar [2] that were spent on the military instead on fighting aids, cancer, malaria, diabetes,… to those suffering or those who have lost friends or family."
Emotional arguments quickly become ridiculous if you leave out the greater effects to society and the relative danger of the threat.
> Emotional arguments quickly become ridiculous if you leave out the greater effects to society and the relative danger of the threat.
No, but numerical arguments quickly become ridiculous when you ignore the fact that the emotional reaction of the nation to 3,000 Americans killed in a terrorist act is itself a physically cognizable phenomenon that must be given due weight in the analysis.
OK, but making irrational policy based on how people feel leads to bad policy. Let people feel what they feel. But don't make long-term policy based on peoples' emotional reactions to events.
I actually disagree, perhaps subtly. Emotional reactions are still reactions, are still a thing that exists in reality, and should be appropriately weighted. But emotional reaction should be weighted in terms of considering it as a consequence, and emotions should be consulted in determining which consequences we (collectively) care about. This is distinct from responding in the short term to a demand for vengeance simply because that's how people feel now (but not distinct from reacting with vengeance if the population will long-term approve of having done so, balancing emotional consequences with others).
People feel radically different things depending on framing and perspective. I agree that there is limited benefit to yelling "you should feel X," but I also think that everyone yelling "you should feel scared" has contributed to the problem.
True. But how you deal with it makes quite a difference. Imagine a greater president than Bush spinning it like this (I'm not good enough with rhetoric to make it a compelling speech though):
"Today America mourns. Today we were attacked. Today terrorists tried to destroy our way of life. They tried to rob us of our sense of security, our liberty, our democracy. And yet today we stand united! We will not let them take away our values our freedom! We will find and persecute those that are responsible. But we will not fall for the cycle of hate and violence the terrorists have laid in front of us."
This path would have been harder to defend against those crying for revenge. But it could have used the same patriotism and stubbornness that was used for war mongering in the alternative world we live in. And in hindsight we see how bad the results of that fear and violence politics were for America and for the world.
Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers.
This is how: in that year alone, 2001, over 10000 people were killed by gun homicides in the US --over three times as many random, pointless deaths as 9/11. Last year, there were over 15000: an increase of nearly twice as many families mourning the senseless death of their loved ones as the 9/11 families, but every year.
And twice as many people every year die of car accidents --sudden, random, untimely deaths. Every year.
These are inconceivable amounts of suffering, of mourning families and communities rent apart: almost as if the population of an entire mid-sized town got randomly obliterated every year.
And then consider that, in their name, hundreds of thousands of other innocent families around the globe have gone through --and still go through-- their very same suffering on that day: losing their loved ones to unimaginably violent attacks out of nowhere, absurdly justified by some abstract, foreign notion --collateral damage, preventive strike, what not.
The numbers don't lie. As a society, sooner or later we will have to come to terms precisely with the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism, and the grotesque price we have inflicted the world (and ourselves) with.
"I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it."
Shark attacks are statistically rare. Lightning strikes (of a human) are statistically rare. Adrenocortical carcinoma is statistically rare. Having to explain this to the family of a victim doesn't change that fact.
In 2001, a banner year for terrorism, America lost more people to heart disease than terrorism. This should surprise no one. What's a little more surprising is the scale of the difference - not just more people, but 200 times as many people. To put it another way, if something on the scale of 9/11 happened every other day we'd still be losing more people to heart disease than to terrorism. Sure, there are criticisms to be had (e.g. we should be comparing years lost or quality of life not simply lives lost) but none of these come close to overcoming that 200 fold difference - one year lost by a 70 yo would have to translate to 200 years lost by a younger person, and those lost in 9/11 weren't especially young (average age was 40). Car accidents disproportionately kill the young, and also killed more Americans than terrorism that year. And of course those (and still other causes - many of them!) continue to kill many times more people than terrorism did in 2001 - terrorism does not.
I think comparing 9/11 to events like heart attacks and car accidents is silly.
There is a big difference between the loss of 3000 people due to a deliberate attack on your country and the loss of 300,000 people due to heart attacks.
"There is a big difference between the loss of 3000 people due to a deliberate attack on your country and the loss of 300,000 people due to heart attacks."
Since you obviously don't mean the heart attacks are worse, and we obviously don't agree, please support this rather than just asserting it. If it simplifies matters, first support that losing one person to deliberate attack is significantly worse than losing one person to illness. Then we can look at whether "significant" is significant enough.
One thing we can quickly agree on is that deterrence (or lack thereof) is more relevant in the case of an attack. But deterrence is only one kind of prevention. I don't see that the actual badness is greater in the case of the attack-caused death.
One way to measure the impact of a death from illness vs. a deliberate attack is the impact on society. Since the goal of terrorism is to destabilize a society and instill fear, the ramifications reach far beyond the individual who died. Take a look at what happened to the stock market after 9/11. The resulting fear was widespread and very disruptive. The ramifications of doing nothing when someone dies of a heart attack are minor, doing nothing when an external force kills a citizen can be far reaching.
The second reason is justice. A person dying from a heart attack is a "natural" death, nobody (except possibly the victim themselves) contributed to the death.
Using the logic of the grandparent, the world should have said "Let's ignore the Rwandan genocide because more babies die of diarrheal diseases."
How would you have reacted to 9-11? Just shrugged your shoulders and said "it's only 3000 people?" Maybe the same for Pearl Harbor? If so, you'd likely be speaking German or Japanese now.
> There is a big difference between the loss of 3000 people due to a deliberate attack on your country and the loss of 300,000 people due to heart attacks.
This is very true. We've spent over a trillion dollars combatting terrorism with little progress (and more American lives lost than in 9/11, let alone Iraqi/Afghan lives). Spending that trillion on heart attack prevention and treatment would've been far more effective at saving lives.
One assumption is that spending 1 trillion dollars over the last 13 years on heart attack prevention and treatment would have made a significant difference in the number of lives saved. How do we quantify this?
A second assumption on the other side of the argument is that spending 0 to fight terrorism would have netted 0 new casualties, anywhere. If we did nothing we would have been better off. But how do we quantify this? We can see the results of our actions, but we cannot see the results of our inactions. If we did not invade Iraq, would more or less people be alive today in that country, and what would their quality of life be? Would Afghanistan be completely ruled by extremist Muslims and be ruled under a brutal Sharia law if we had not invaded and tried to put a partly democratic and citizen based government in place? Who knows? If that did happen, would more people be suffering due to extreme oppression and sectarian violence than what our invasions has caused? How do we quantify all of these factors?
Making big sweeping statements with huge numbers that dwarf anything we're used to talking about is sensationalism. The fact of the matter is that the people making these decisions, by and large, are not doing it because they are trying to get rich or build some fiefdom. Dem or Repub, Liberal or Conservative, I think that generally speaking, most politicians and government officials are in their positions to do good. They see themselves as agents of change and sometimes have to make incredibly hard decisions in the times in which they live (not 10 years later). They are trying to give this country and others around the world their best shot at living a life of freedom and liberty. We're not always going to agree with decisions, and some are truly mistakes, but few that we look at are simply because of some crazy conspiracy agenda.
I think it's hard to argue that a trillion dollars to the NIH, CDC, preventative medicine for the poor, etc. wouldn't result in at least 3k lives saved during the period.
I also think it's impossible to rationally argue that the Iraq war did anything to reduce terrorism, given that the pretext for invasion was WMD, not terrorism, and that extremists now control large swaths of the country where they had minimal power under Hussein.
> Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it.
We've lost more people in the Iraq/Afghan wars than were lost in 9/11, for little progress - Iraq's splitting into pieces and much occupied by folks hardcore enough that Al Qaeda goes "hang on, you're making us look bad!" What's your explanation to their families?
It's easy to be wise but I'm pretty sure no-one could have predicted the rise of ISIS. Saddam Hussein was a tyrannous dictator that ruled for too long.
Pretty much everyone predicted a power vacuum when the US pulled out. Hell, it was the stated reason by Dick Cheney for not going to Baghdad in 1991:
> What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?
You're right it seemed like most pundits predicted they'd call themselves SPECTRE or H.A.M.M.E.R. or something like that. You never can be too sure with these super-villains.
> I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMDs. Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it.
The statistical ridiculousness of terrorism is explained by this https://www.iraqbodycount.org/ more than anything. Try to explain that to Iraqi families as well (among others). So called "terrorism" is more like a sane reaction to this shit.
> > The threat of attack at any time. Constant fear. All so people could build their little empires inside the military and intelligence communities.
> I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMD
yes, and their population was also kept in constant fear of the western WMDs that were actually aimed at them. All that also served similar ends in their governments's own little empires.
> I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it.
If we're talking statistics, far more Americans die of diabetes and heart problems than terrorism. Better to spend trillions of dollars there, no, instead of bleeding that money in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Apart from the points other posters made in reply to your comment, please keep in mind that it is not obvious that fearing an attack, military intelligence or threats of retaliation would reduce the probability of an attack happening (especially if it's a terrorist attack).
I'm pretty sure the Soviet Union did exist, and actually did have WMDs. Similarly, I'd like to ask how you would explain the statistical ridiculousness of terrorism to the families of the thousands of people that died in the twin towers. I'm sure they'd be fascinated to hear it.
I fully accept a lot of mistakes were made during the cold war, and I also deplore the expensive, ineffective and unnecessary overreach by western intelligence agencies, but the threats they were and are purporting to defend us from are very real. Some of our responses to those threats have been mistaken and unnecessary, but it certainly does not follow that those threats don't exist and don't need to be responded to.