Do The Freakin Math

Liberals and conservatives alike frequently rely on limited evidence, personal experience, religious beliefs or gut emotions to determine solutions for complex problems. From immigration to global warming - taxes to terrorism - or health care to free trade - analytical study is rare. Science based policy making isn’t the way of Washington. And the consequences are catastrophic. Change is urgently needed. Just do the freakin’ math.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Kindess is the basis of Security.

Dear Editor,
Michael Chertoff is right. ‘There has not been an attack on America soil since 9-11’. This is also meaningless for at least 3 reasons.
First, Al Qaeda doesn’t need to hit us here if we are destroying our own economy and constitution through an endless global war that also corrodes our cherished domestic freedoms. Bin Ladin’s primary goal wasn’t mass murdering Americans on American soil. His primary goals were to ‘break us economically’ and ‘divide us politically’. Bush’s policies have been doing this quite well.
Second, Al Qaeda doesn’t need to come here when they can kill us over there in greater numbers. More Americas have been killed and maimed by terrorists during the last 7 years of the Bush Presidency than from all the terrorist attacks on Americans proceeding and including 9-11.
Last, Americans are now directly and indirectly responsibility for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Muslims in Iraq and the displacement of millions more as a result of Bush’s post 9-11 policies. These losses have aided the recruitment of future terrorists that may yet succeed in mass casualty attacks here -- perhaps using biological weapons.
Chertoff claims that “at our ports, we have deployed radiation scanning equipment to check virtually 100 percent of incoming cargo for WMD”. He doesn’t say these scanners are incapable of detecting biological WMD that could be more devastating than a nuclear blast. Unlimited border patrol/control expenditures won’t be able to detect or stop such weapons without completely destroying our economy and shredding our constitution. Then there are domestic sources of WMD like the post 9-11 anthrax attacks by a US citizen ‘with’ security clearances.
And, the power to commit mass murder grows exponentially with both old and new technologies. And, the same technology growth curves give every government increasing capacity to invade the privacy of our lives.
Real security lays in common principle within each of the Abrahamic religions. Be kind to one another. U.S. militaristic foreign policy based on “US interests” has not always been kind to innocent people. Our best interest is to ensure the security of all people who share this troubled world with us. Our Savior once said, ‘Those who live by the sword will certainly die by it.’ In this light sufficient U.S. expenditures towards Helene Gayle’s advice (“Do the right thing: Strike at the roots of Poverty” 12-26-08) would do more to yield security than any military or DHS expenditures.

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