The article by Luke Marshall excerpted below appears in Harper's Magazine (March 2004):
Terror, like ecstasy, tends to magnify perceptions. Just as affection becomes adoration in the physical act of love, so too does vigilance sometimes become morbid obsession in the face of spectacular violence. To be effective, this normal function of survival must be temporary. It is now more than two years since our own national incident of spectacular violence, however, and although the United States remains obsesses it is not unfair, or even insensitive, to begin considering the events of September 11 from a more detached perspective.
In 2001, terrorists killed 2,978 people in the United States, including the five killed by anthrax. In that same year, according to the Centers for Disease Control, heart disease killed 700,142 Americans and cancer 553,768; various accidents claimed 101,537 lives, suicide 30,622, and homicide, not counting the attacks, another 17,330. As President Bush pointed out in January, no one has been killed by terrorists on American soil since then. Neither, according to the FBI, was anyone killed here by terrorists in 2000. In 1999, the number was one. In 1998, it was three. In 1997, zero. Even using 2001 as a baseline, the actuarial tables would suggest that our concern about terror mortality ought to be on the order of our concern about fatal workplace injuries (5,431 deaths) or drowning (3,247). To recognize this is not to dishonor the loss to the families of those killed by terrorists, but neither should their anguish eclipse that of the families of children who dies in their infancy that year (27,801). Every death has its horrors.
Anti-terrorism nonetheless has become the animating principle of nearly every aspect of American public policy. We have launched two major military engagements in its name. It informs how we fund scientific research, whose steel or textiles we buy, who may enter or leave the country, and how we sort our mail. It has shaped the structure of the Justice Department and the fates of 180,000 government employees now in the service of the Department of Homeland Security. Nearly every presidential speech touches on terrorism, and, according to the White House, we can look forward to spending at least $50 billion per year on "homeland security" until the end of time.
. . .
In New York City we have a program called Comstat, in which police carefully track various crime statistics, detect anomalies, and marshal their forces appropriately. It works. There were 596 murders here in 2003, down from 2,245 in 1990. This sort of effort lacks election-year grandeur, however, which may explain why the Department of Homeland Security does not bother to track the number of Americans killed by terrorists. (The FBI tracks terror fatalities within the United States and the State Department tracks the same abroad, but each uses a different definition of terrorism and neither has domestic numbers beyond 2001.) Similarly, there is no comprehensive watch list of likely terror operatives. What we have instead is a sophisticated public-relations system, the color-coded "Homeland Security Advisory System," that works to terrify Americans without the grisly work of actual terrorism.
Many desired activities, from shopping to watching television, have been cited as examples of what we must do, or else "the terrorists will have won." This is debatable.
What is not debatable is that if the American people are terrified then the terrorists have won. And, in this regard, they will have been working with the full cooperation of the current administration.Read more at:
http://www.geocities.com/preventingmurder/
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