Nick Kristof is beginning to realize the insanity of our obsessive focus on antiterrorism measures, when other dangers are vastly more damaging:
Vehicle fatalities don't get attention because they occur in ones and twos. If people died at the same rate but in one horrifying crash a month that killed 3,500 people, then Mr. Bush and Congress would speedily make auto safety a priority and save thousands of lives a year. As Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has said: "If we had 115 people die a day in aviation crashes, we wouldn't have a plane in the sky."
But I think Kristof is still misguided in his approach, and his understanding of antiterrorism's ultimate goals. He approvingly quotes Jeffrey Runge, head of NHTSA:
"First off, we have to do everything we're doing for counterterrorism," he said. "There's nothing that we're doing that we shouldn't be doing, and you can make the case that we should be doing more. . . . However, we're still losing 115 people a day on the highways, and basically the perpetrators of those deaths also fit within a profile" — such as alcohol abusers.
Can you see where this is going? You can connect the dots with this story about US authorities looking at ways to tighten security in passenger rail systems in the wake of the Madrid bombings. A week ago, before the bombings, anyone could have told you that trains are vulnerable -- but the authorities only move to do something about it after they have an emotionally charged reason to do so.
The "war on terror" is not about actually protecting the public from terrorism; it's about using fear as a tool to expand the powers of the police apparatus. That's why the increased security only happens after a major event: if it happened before, there wouldn't be a political consensus behind it, because there would be no fear to exploit.
Runge can't possibly question the war on terror's priorities -- he'd lose his job. But notice how he expands the class of suspect persons -- the "perpetrators" of accidents also "fit within a profile". In other words, highway safety, among other things, is another front in the war on terror. Soon enough, alcohol abuse will be something the terror police will look for. After all, since terror attacks are few and far between, the police have to have something to do.
Let me quote Tom Robbins to illustrate:
Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.Posted by Chris at March 13, 2004 08:44 AM
You can really see the difference between the U.S. and the rest of the world in Spain's reaction to the Madrid bombings. Millions of people -- a quarter of the Spanish population -- took to the streets to demonstrate their grief and anger over the bombings. No agenda other than a massive outpouring of emotion. The Spanish prime minister took part, as did the PMs of Italy, Ireland, and other countries. Contrast that to the U.S., where as soon as we got bombed, the President spent the day moving between "undisclosed locations," and when he did speak on TV, appeared visibly scared. He didn't appear in public -- let alone in front of millions of people -- for weeks after that. The subsequent U.S. reaction to terrorism has been like that, based on fear, avoidance, and top-down decisionmaking.
Posted by: d f tweney at March 15, 2004 09:30 AMWhen I read your post, I thought "yeah, Spain's reaction to the attacks was different because they went through fascism, and America never did".
Then I saw Juan Cole say the same thing on his blog today:
http://juancole.com/2004_03_01_juancole_archive.html#107933903152356231
Weird coincidence, but I think there's a lot to this angle.
Dylan mentioned something which has driven me crazy for three years. Bush should have been holding a press conference on the White House lawn, not cowering in a "spider hole". You are the only other person I have heard brought this issue up. Every time I bring it up, I recount the story of Teddy Roosevelt getting shot in 1912, where he went on to give his scheduled speech before going to the hospital. Now *that's* presidential material.
Chris—
What do you think America is going through right now?
What do you think America is going through right now?
I have a hunch that's a rhetorical question, but it bears answering. I think we are at a protofascist stage; I wouldn't yet say it's a fascist state, because the state has not yet organized widespread terror against internal threats (although individual actors close to the state have, and there have been some select instances of what you could call government by terror, e.g. Jose Padilla).
Eco's 14 Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt essay is useful here -- by that mark our society shows 13 of his 14 criteria for fascism (lacking only "everybody is educated to become a hero"). But that still doesn't mean the government is fascist per se. The government is operating concentration camps (Guantanamo) but has not (yet) turned them on large numbers of its own citizens, nor has there been (much) violent suppression of dissent by the state (crucial distinction).