I know Aldous Huxley and George Orwell wrote the originals, but this, from the Cato Institute via BoingBoing, is a very practical explanation of just how useful a state of terror can be to a government who wants to hang onto power when the people want to freshen up the litter box.
Only traitors try to make us afraid of terrorists
In this mind-blowing, exhaustively researched Cato institute paper by Ohio State University’s John Mueller, the case against being afraid of terrorism is laid out in irrefutable logic, backed with credible, documented statistics about terrorism’s risks. From the number of fatalities produced by terrorism to the trends in terrorism death to the fact that almost no one has ever died from a military biological agent to the fact that poison gas and dirty bombs in the field do only minor damage — this paper is the most reassuring and infuriating piece of analysis I’ve read since September 11th, 2001. The bottom line is, terrorism doesn’t kill many people. Even in Israel, you’re four times more likely to die in a car wreck than as a result of a terrorist attack. In the USA, you need to be more worried about lightning strikes than terrorism. The point of terrorism is to create terror, and by cynically convincing us that our very countries are at risk from terrorism, our politicians have delivered utter victory to the terrorists: we are terrified.
Much of the current alarm is generated from the knowledge that many of today’s terrorists simply want to kill, and kill more or less randomly, for revenge or as an act of what they take to be The shock and tragedy of September 11 does demand a focused and dedicated program to confront international terrorism and to attempt to prevent a repeat. But it seems sensible to suggest that part of this reaction should include an effort by politicians, officials, and the media to inform the public reasonably and realistically about the terrorist context instead of playing into the hands of terrorists by frightening the public. What is needed, as one statistician suggests, is some sort of convincing, coherent, informed, and nuanced answer to a central question: “How worried should I be?” Instead, the message the nation has received so far is, as a Homeland Security official put (or caricatured) it, “Be scared; be very, very scared — but go on with your lives.” Such messages have led many people to develop what Leif Wenar of the University of Sheffield has aptly labeled “a false sense of insecurity.”
raincoaster 
But will the democrats be any different? Or will they make dodgy deals with dodgy governments to win votes on sanctions and do it the slow and painful way? I find the ‘War on Terror’ makes more sense these days if you think of it as the ‘war against Iran’. One way of the other I think their gonna get it.
There is no war on Iran right now. Steven, realize please that they keep moving the target, switching the nametag of the bogeyman. Remember a few years ago, when all they had to do was catch Bin Laden and terror would be over? And remember after that, when all they had to do was catch Saddam Hussein and terror would be over? And remember when…
This way they never allow the population to catch their breath; they just keep picking a new bogeyman. It’ll be Pakistan, or North Korea, or Somalia, or…
They will never run out of straw men here, and none of them is really as large a threat to the freedom and peace of the citizens of the world as the leaders of the United States of America, who have a vested interest in continuing this charade.
Iran is Iran. Lebanon is Lebanon. And everyone has forgotten Oklahoma City, because that guy was a white American.
The fundamental problem here is not death; it is the willingness of the population to be frightened into giving up their intrinsic human rights. We are all going to die, but only some of us will die free.
So why have they surrounded Iran then?
Just another domino Steven. Just another domino.
they won’t invade Pakistan will they? They can’t do, they play cricket with us.
I think as a country Pakistan’s not going to last another 20 years. What the Middle East is now, Kashmir will be very soon. But that won’t happen until Israel’s government loses the backing of the US, and that won’t happen quickly.
Whats Israel got to do with Kashmir? Most forward thinking young people with routes in the subcontinent see their region starting to cooperate more, kind of like Europe.
Actually, Kashmir has been improving in an agonising one-step-forward-half-a-step-back way. Both Pakistan and India developed nuclear weapons at least partly as a response to the situation there. Now there is at least a bus between the two halves.
Speaking of which–if you want something more to worry about: consider the holes the US congress is set to punch in every nuclear treaty as they approve special exemption to America’s own laws on nuclear trade with India while at the same time condemmning Iran’s reckless endagerment.
But of course, India’s our friend. Sort of like Iran a few years back. By the way–who provided Iran with its first reactors, anyway?
Oh–right. Forget I said anything, Mr. Gonzales.
Has it been improving? Because I’m seeing an increase in links to active terror cells worldwide. It’s true they haven’t attempted to murder any Surrey newspapermen in the last little while, but it’s partly because the papers have been rolling over for them over the past couple of years.
There are a lot of exports to the UK from the Kashmiri region. In India there is a big rich poor divide and in really rural poor areas no access to education. There is a generation of ‘railway kids’ who just ride around on long distance trains begging, many are orphans or have been disowned. Some villages have no real access to healthcare or education and still belive mentally ill children are posessed by spirits etc.
In other respects India is a huge emerging market, they are the controlling voice in inetrnation cricket, some of their stars make as much through sponsorship and our soccer players. Their stock market has being doing well and their economy is growing. They are starting to poach our call centre industry and the intellect of young Indian students I mean over here is flabberghasting. They are an emerging country all right and the only enemy they have in the world is a few radical Sikh and Muslim terror cells. They are friendly with the UK, USA and China.
Yes and no. The politics of Kashmir are very different from the rest of the area; it’s very much like Kurdistan, only the people are renowned fighters and the area is far richer in natural resources. The whole India/Pakistan tinderbox is unstable, and getting moreso as more and more terrorists are being traced to Pakistan. Didn’t the UK government claim the reason they arrested those people the other day was they’d been given the go-ahead from Pakistan? Doesn’t look all that friendly or settled to me.
It’s a bit fo a Northern Ireland if you ask me, only the people don’t even have council houses and the religion thing is Islam / Hindu rather than Catholic / Prodestant
Hmmm, I’d disagree, because the divide (India/Pakistan) only goes back to the forties. I know a fellow who, if partition had never happened, would rule a small kingdom today. Increasing sectarianism reconciling with geopolitical and economic interests is going to be one of the major issues in this century. Look at Aceh; fiercely independent, not a part of Indonesia until within living memory, but they’ve decided it’s better for them to have a distinct culture within a larger country, much the same as Bali. Difficult to govern a place like that, though.