New York Times Book Review

When The Commander can get her hands on the Sunday edition of the New York Times, it is a luxery she insist on. This morning I was reading the book reviews, because The Commander wanted the laptop. I came accross a book by John Mueller A STATE OF TERROR. The basis of the book is "A real but limited threat has been inflated to produce widespread and unjustified anxiety". Mr. Mueller has put into words something I have been thinking about for some time. He suggest that the 9/11 attacks were probably a one-time event that cannot be repeated. As Mueller explains in "Overblown," fear of flying after 9/11 led to increases in long distance driving that probably killed way more people in accidents than died on the four planes hijacked on 9/11. In his words "Which is the greater threat: terrorism, or the reaction against it?....A threat that is real but likely to prove to be of limited scope has been massively, perhaps even fancifully, inflated to produce widespread and unjustified anxiety. This process has then led to wasteful, even self-parodic expenditures and policy overreactiions."

The whole thing reminds me of the great Y2K jazz that occurred when the year 2000 came. All these dingalings predicted computer problems that would bring the world to a stand still. Billions were spent for nothing. The sad thing about the 9/11 nonsense is that Osma Bin Ladin has been able to harvest way more from his incident in terms of hurting us than he could ever have imagined. 99 percent of the damage has been due to our over reaction. Much like the great communist witch hunts this will take years to end, before people realize the whole thing was blown way out of proportion. If you ever observed little kids you would know that sometimes they enjoy being scared. I think 9/11 gave use a chance to go back to childhood idiocy.