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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (31645)	2/26/2004 12:01:07 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793625

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.)

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (31645)	2/26/2004 1:49:58 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793625

You still don't get it. The point is, that a murder did not just 'happen' - someone did it deliberately, and I want justice done to him, for the sake of his victim, and to stop him and others from doing it again. No, I guess I don't get it. We were talking about fear. Rational fear is a function of risk, pure and simple. I don't think that there's any way to objectively assess terrorism and find it to be the greatest risk out there to either this country or to you or me personally. In this most recent post you're talking instead about anger and vengeance and righteousness. I understand anger and vengeance and righteousness, but they are something different from fear. If your anger and need for justice are such that you choose to make terrorism your number one priority, that I can understand. But not out of fear. That makes no sense to me at all. We have relatively little to fear from terrorists.