This is my first post & of course I wanted to come out swinging, but I fear I might’ve bitten off a bit more that I can chew, so I’m thinking it’ll end up being a series of rants with a “& what the fuck are we supposed to do about it?” at the end. The WOT thing has been on my mind a good bit lately. In part because of the related madness on immigration & the “secure the borders” marching songs being sung by so many politicos. It makes me crazy.

The story works like this. “Security” from terrorism is an illusion. It’s just not something that’s compatible with an open society. If you want a picture of a society that is secure from terrorism you’ll need to imagine the iron boot of tyranny stomping on the face of humanity. The kind of centralized, spy on your own people, wiretap on every line, snitch on your neighbor, jackbooted secret police, presumption of guilt, indefinite detention without charges, goose stepping, flag waving, jingoistic government that would make China’s authoritarianism seem warm & feel good fuzzy.

The problem revolves around rational risk assessment. It’s the “pigs kill more people than sharks” quandary. Sharks are scary, they have big teeth, they’re gray & mean looking, but that barnyard hog is more likely to gore & trample you to death. Let’s have some fun with statistics. Assume a world where 9/11 happens every year, over & over again. Some time during the year planes will fall out of the sky & buildings will burn & collapse. What kind of threat does that represent? In a world where a 9/11 scale event happens every single year…your risk of choking to death on a hot dog are about the same as dying in the terrorist attack. You’re four times more likely to be assaulted with a gun by a run of the mill everyday thug (as opposed to a beturbaned terrorist madman), you’re about five & a half times more likely to be killed in an accidental fall, six times more likely to perish from accidental poisoning, sixteen times more likely to die in a (non terrorist related) traffic accident. Get this…you’re more than ten times more likely to kill yourself than to be harmed by a terrorist. This in a world where something as deadly as 9/11 happens on a regular basis.

Considering all these risks. A rational person might conclude that we should ban firearms & declare war on internal combustion. Sadly, there aren’t a lot of rational people running around out there. I think Katrina & it’s aftermath have rather conclusively proven that this administration couldn’t find their own asshole with two hands & a flashlight. But just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the reason building aren’t blowing up is because of the investments made in homeland security ($180 billion since 9/11). Spending for 2006 is expected to top $50 billion. Using 9/11 as our filter, that works out to about $17 million dollars for each life saved from terrorists. If we’re to believe the president in his assertion that the reason we’re fighting in Iraq is to prevent ourselves from having to fight at home, that adds another $9.8 billion monthly, bringing the per life cost of preventing another 9/11 to $55.68 million per life saved from the evil terrorists. (…to be continued)