You still don't get it. The desire to "stop someone from doing 'it' again" needs to be proportional to the 'it' you are trying to stop. You might want, for example, the capture of the murderer of your daughter (a hypothetical) to be the nation's number one priority, but your desire for justice, revenge, or your urge to protect society, does not elevate the threat, it only speaks to your perception of the threat colored by your emotion.
Kholt is speaking to reacting to threats based on a metric of liklihood of occurrence, number of casualties, and rationality of response. A desire for "justice" really has nothing to do with such a formulation (Kholt correct me if I am wrong here.) Going after "justice" is silly, if you end up wasting time and money you should be spending on other threats. Please note that neither I, nor Kholt (I think) is arguing that we should ignore terrorism. We merely conclude from the available evidence (as opposed to those non-quantifiable "what ifs") that it is NOT the greatest threat facing the US, and it should not be the number one priority for this country. Terrorism should, of course, be considered in our military and domestic planning- but the number one priority? Difficult to justify that logically. (If you use fear and "what ifs" you can justify anything, so best not to go that route.) |
