It may appear callous to write this on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11, but it is the date when it needs to be said: terrorism is an insignificant threat to our lives, and we are giving up way too much in the process.
I’ve been thinking for a while about why our societies tend to overreact to some events while absorbing the impact of others, which have, under any possible measuring standard, similar or smaller impact on our lives.
In the first category comes terrorism, or things like drugs, bus accidents and tobacco. In the second you can put things like car accidents, death by firearms, suicide or alcoholism. Not only do we exagerate the importance of things we react to , but the very policies that are used to fight the supposed problem tend to make things worse and have a very real cost for us.
There are two main differences between the two kinds of events:
i) one kind cannot easily be blamed on something or somebody specific, thus requiring long term plans that work statistically over the long run, instead of scapegoating;
ii) one kind cannot easily be blamed on somebody “different”, thus preventing cowardly politicians from evoking their responsibility instead of ours.
What the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, or the vilification of smokers have in common is that a (very real) problem is blown out of proportion, or is turned into a problem it is not by the policies meant to “solve” it, which are really at heart populist power grabs.
Drugs
Drugs are a healthcare problem for the relatively small number of hard drug addicts, and it is a quite large crime problem (people attacked by drug users who need the money to pay for their addiction, and large scale – and violent – criminal networks that corrupt our borders and take control of the streets).
The simplest solution would be to decriminalize drugs, and make them legally accessible. You’d eliminate 90% of petty crime, cut the prison population by the same, and destroy the main source of profits for most gangs. Against that is the healthcare issue of possibly increased addiction, which could easily be solved by investing only a small fraction of the law enforcement money saved into treatment and care for the genuinely addicted (i.e. not the casual marijuana smokers).
The War on Drugs, of course, takes the opposite tack, by criminalising drugs and drug use, and striking ferociously against all involved. It makes the drug business immensely profitable (and a terrible temptation for those that are not given other opportunities in society), it creates the need for petty crime by addicts and it feeds a huge prison-enforcement industrial complex with a vested interest in the pursuit of the same “tough” policies.
Undelying this, of course, is the fact that the issue (and the blame) can conveniently be shifted away from drug users and onto drug providers. It’s a supply problem, not a demand problem. It ignores that casual demand from the middle classes drives the business, and it ignores the real victims, hard drug addicts, which mostly come from lower classes. So, problems of the poor are left to fester, while the responsibility of the average citizen is conveniently forgotten.
Cigarette
Cigarettes kill. But they mostly kill those that use them. Second hand smoke is real, but a minor health issue. The cost to society of cigarette deaths is minor as the extra healthcare costs and the lost “productive” years are more than “compensated” (from the public purse’s perspective) by the significantly lower pension payments to smokers, who die before they can claim them after having chipped in most of their lives.
Again, the simple solution is to treat cigarette smoke like what it is, i.e. a dangerous long term poison for smokers and a stinking nuisance for others. Protect non smokers from smoke as much as possible, and let smokers do their thing so long as they know it’s dangerous (and most do, today).
Current policies tend to focus on the death toll, which, as pointed above cynically, is not a financial problem for public authorities, but more of a moral crusade. Racketeering the tobacco companies appears unseemly to me (and I write this as a virulent non-smoker who hates smoke and finds careless smokers to be the rudest people on earth).
Again, it’s easier to blame evil tobacco manufacturers, grab money from them, and infantilise the public by taking all responsibility away from them.
Terror
9/11 was a staggeringly successful and spectacular terrorist attack, but even that most deadly event is not enough to make terrorism anything more than a minor nuisance to our societies. This is not meant to diminish the pain of those that lost loved ones or were otherwise struck by that event, but it’s a fact.
Even in that year, which towers over all others in terms of numbers of victims and damage caused, terrorism should be put in its rightful place.
Using the most recent available, i.e. 2003 CDC data (pdf, see summary pp. 8-11 or table 10), one can note the following numbers:
There were 2.48 million deaths in that year, of which 109,277 accidents and 17,732 homicides. 9/11 caused less than 0.1% of American deaths in 2001, 2% of accidental deaths and 15% of homicides – in one year. Over a ten year period, the rates are correspondingly divided by 10.
Of course that does not make these death less important, and it does not mean that no reaction is needed. But it does mean that a sense of proportion is required. You do not spend 2 trillion dollars, sacrifice another couple thousand lives of soldiers, kill tens of thousands of Iraqis, ditch 60 years of diplomacy and 200 years of constitutional rights for something that can be compared to:
– malnutrition (3,153 deaths in 2003)) [Yes, believe it – see items E40-E46 in table 10]
– asthma (4,099)
– drowing (3,306)
– fire (3,369)
– falls (2,306 – only Americans under 55)
– injuries at work (5,025)
– pneumonias (4,097 – only Americans under 55)
– heart disease (3,250 – only Americans aged 25-34)
or, more obviously
– alcohol induced (20,687)
– drug-induced (28,723)
– poisoning (28,700)
– motor-vehicle accidents (43,340)
– suicides (31,484)
– murder with firearms (11,920)
Again, these death numbers are for one year, and were similar and will be similar in past and future years; they are not one-time events.
The simple solution to terrorism is, quite simply, to ignore it. Not, of course, ignore the crime, but treat it like a crime – yes, a law-enforcement matter -and not dignify it with a “War”. The enemy are gangsters with grievances. Catch, sentence and imprison the gangster, and think about the grievances. That may require adjustments to laws and law enforcement procedures, and new forms of international cooperation and even diplomacy, and certainly some additional security procedures in public places and other vulnerable structures, but no fearmongering.
Even today you are more likely to win the lottery than to be hurt in a terrorist attack, even if you take the NY or London metro every day. Look at the Washington sniper back in 2001 – the chances that you were going to be hit were essentially nil, and yet everybody was terrified for a number of days – because the few victims were doing things that all of us do (buying gas, etc) and can identify with.
And yet current policies are to wage war in remote countries (which only creates more potential gangsters with grievances) at high cost in treasury and life, to create highly visible, but mostly pointless and very burdensome pseudo security procedures, to give unprecedented powers to law enforcement communities at the extent of basic individual rights, and to designate small groups in the population as suspicious and “pre-treasonous”, fostering a climate of fear, suspicion, division and hate on which thrive the most populist.
Again, the price paid appears overwhelming in comparison to the practical threat that terrorists can create. We are doing their job by being terrorised and forgetting our laws. The price pais is high, and the results invisible, but the most important is there: the appearance of action, and very real power and money grabs in the name of that most righteous fight.
Motor Vehicles
I’ll bring in again car accidents, which are the logical item to bring up. A motor vehicle accident is just as deadly for its victims, or traumatising for the survivors, as any bomb attack. It’s senseless, random, and highly disruptive if not deadly. And yet we casually victim numbers orders of magnitude higher than from terrorism without declaring a “War on motoring”. Why is that?
i) one argument is that terrorists intend to kill, whereas other drivers don’t, which changes the underlying motive and brings in an element of pure evil. I’d retort that a driving while drunk, to me, is pretty damn close to wanting to randomly kill; I’d also argue that the core argument here is that we think that we are in control of us and others in our cars, and therefore feel safe, whereas terrorism makes us helpless (thus the similar overreaction to bus, train and plane accidents, which are much safer transport modes but whose accidents seem to scare us a lot more than car accidents). Also, terrorists want to kill us “because of our freedom” – they question our very existence, whereas other drivers do not deny our existence (nah, they just obliterate it anyway, just as randomly, if more frequently).
ii) the second argument is linked to the perception of the pure randomness in terror attacks vs the more “calculated risk” nature of taking one’s car. Driving (or walking on sidewalks) is something we do all the time and which, most of the time, brings us no harm. Terrorism appears only once in a while, but when it does, it is each time very deadly and nasty. All studies show that we have a really bad perception or risk, and an even worse understanding of statistics, and thus we have a tendancy to over exagerate our fear of such rare, but highly visible events (note the similar fears about child kidnappings, something extraordinarily rare, in fact).
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This brings me back to my intial point:
– some problems appear to have a solution when you can blame someone else. Arab terrorists, South American drug dealers and urban gangs, tobacco manufacturers. Politicians can be seen to act when they take discriminatory or retaliatory action against these groups. Problem solved. If it persists (as it will), hit them harder.
– some problems can only be blamed on ourselves, and thus are better ignored. I did not discuss firearms, and I avoided bringing in this diary the energy crisis but, like tobacco and car accidents, firearm deaths and energy prices have root causes in our own behavior and preferences, and our inability to give up our “God-given” rights for paltry reasons.
We’re perfectly able to rationalise pretty high levels of risk taking for things that we care about. Why don’t we do the same about our freedoms, and tolerate a few ugly terrorist attacks (supposing they will even be attempted, or yet succeed) as the lowish price for our freedoms?
Do we really care more about cars and guns and casual drugs than about liberty? What a shame.
Crossposted from DailyKos, where your support is always appreciated.
