There are many underlying, tacit, assumptions that differentiate those on the left and right these days. Identifying such divergent assumptions about the world and examining them is a valuable exercise and may help better clarify why there is so much passionate shouting and so little reasoned argument in our culture. I would like to get "Back to Basics" on the War on Terror and look at one of the assumptions that clearly exists as a mirror image on both sides of the political divide and explains a great deal of the power of the issue.
Here is the meme, as seen from the left side of the divide, courtesy of Gary Farber of Amygdala:
The threat of Islamic terrorism is, in context, comparatively trivial, and no justification whatever to give up the liberty our country holds sacred.
And his follow-up from yesterday:
Islamic terrorism is a significant threat, and I've been saying so for decades. It's not, on the other hand, more than a fraction of the threat of an ideologically inclined Soviet Union armed with thousands of nuclear missiles read to go within an hour or three's notice. Discuss the relative threat, and what was and was not worth doing in response to each.
I think Gary is partially correct that the current threat is a fraction of the threat from the Soviet Union, but may be missing some crucial factors that make the current threat a much larger fraction than he imagines.
Until fairly recently, it required a nation state with an industrial base and an educated populace to create an existential danger to Western Civilization. The USSR was one such nation state and the cold war took half a century to win. The fundamental equation in the cold war was affectionately known as M.A.D., Mutually Assured Destruction; if the Russians wanted to destroy us, we were fully capable of destroying them, and vice versa. From the earliest days of the cold war, we fought through proxies, and recognized that there were certain lines neither side would cross. The Cuban missile crisis, a point where we were especially close to nuclear war, occurred because the Russians thought they could test the limits with an inexperienced, light weight President, who showed himself to have more spine than they expected. Despite coming close a few times (mostly through accidents and human error), the key to the cold war was that each side was deterrable. Thus, a "nuclear exchange" would have been catastrophic, but its likelihood was always low. Times are very different now.
First of all, it no longer requires a state apparatus to acquire and use Weapons of Mass Destruction; much of the groundwork has now been done by others and the expertise has been shared, which means that, in many cases, a smaller political grouping, like a well established and networked terror organization, can acquire previously unimaginable capabilities.
Of the three major weapons considered as WMD, chemical weapons are the most limited in their effects. Yet, despite their limitations, the estimates were that if al Qaeda had been successful last year in their chemical weapons attack on Amman, upwards of 80,000 people would have died. This is hardly a trivial number, though losing 80,000 New Yorkers would not, in and of itself, destroy our country; the reaction to such a devastating attack, however, would almost certainly leave this country unrecognizable.
Nuclear weapons are probably the second most destructive choice of our enemies, though the effect of them is readily seen and dramatic. We know from unraveling the A. Q. Khan network, that the Pakistani nuclear program was being shared with almost every monster on the planet. It is not at all a stretch to imagine that if it had continued unimpeded, once sanctions had been lifted off of Iraq (which was in the works when the war took place), it would only have been a matter of time before various unsavory regimes had nuclear weapons. It is instructive to watch the situation with Iran, a nation whose leaders have repeatedly said that once they have the bomb they will use it. People ignore such pronouncements out of fear and denial; such a reaction is protective against anxiety in the short term, but is disastrous in the long term. However, again, even if 100,000 Americans in Seattle or Houston (I don't want to pick on New York again, and besides, I work there) are murdered in a nuclear attack and a portion of a city left uninhabitable, it would still not destroy our country or the biosphere in the way an exchange with Russia would have. Nonetheless, our reaction would be guaranteed to make this nation unrecognizable.
Finally, biological weapons are potentially, the most devastating, and require the least state sponsorship and industrial apparatus. A group of scientists inadvertently created a strain of small pox last year which killed 100% of previously vaccinated, immune, mice. The biological expertise involved was equivalent to a college biology lab experience and involved a relatively minor change in the viral genome. Other chilling possibilities abound; an anthrax bacteria with the ability for air borne person to person spread or an e.coli (the most common gut bacteria) with the gene for botulism toxin splice into its genome, would make the current angst about bird flu seem like a picnic.
In the near and not so near future, it is likely that even more deadly weapons will be seen (think of nanobots which are programmed to "eat" anything organic) but even without those possibilities arising, it long ago become no longer prudent to play defense when it came to WMD, especially when dealing with groups that loudly touted their desire and willingness to "martyr" themselves in order to murder as many infidels as possible.
Finally, if any of these attacks were successful, even if the casualties were kept to a minimal number (for instance if a nuclear weapon were a dud and "only" killed 1000 and contaminated 10 square blocks of Manhattan) that would not be the end of its effects. Our government, whether run by the Republicans or the Democrats, would immediately be forced to introduce draconian limitations on our civil liberties, for fear of further attacks; our economy would take a hit from which it would have tremendous difficulty recovering and its effects would resonate through the economy for years. Just as one example, imagine a 1-2 trillion dollar loss of prime New York real estate; no insurer in the world would be able to cope and the construction industry, without available insurance, would essentially shut down. The effects would reverberate on and on through the global economy and probably snow ball into a recession and/or depression. As collateral damage, the loss of American expertise and largess around the world would almost certainly cause many times that number of innocent casualties in less fortunate parts of the world. How much would Americans be contributing to the next earthquake relief effort when downtown Washington is a smoking, radioactive crater?
Thus I would suggest to Gary and others on the left who fear the NSA surveillance program (which has until this time not been shown to have harmed any Americans) more than they fear al Qaeda, your fears are misplaced and paradoxically dangerous both to the lives of Americans and our civil liberties.
I welcome any reasoned disagreement. I would be more than delighted to be shown to be incorrect, but thus far, beyond assertions that I am over-estimating the danger of Islamic terror, no one has done much to marshal the evidence to show this is true.
[If Gary, or anyone else, posts a decent article showing all the flaws in my argument, I will post it here in return for the same privelege at their site.]
Let the argument begin!
Update: After completing this post, I read an excellent comment from D. Smith to the orignal Can Liberals and Neo-cons Talk to Each Other? which covers some of the same territory as this post but with some pretty interesting additions and a different slant. All the comments from that post are worthwhile and illuminating.
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