GIThruster wrote:Skippy, I was living just outside NYC during 911. I doubt I knew anyone who did not know someone who died. Comparing that sort of tragedy to auto accidents and the flu makes you appear completely out of touch with the reality of what happens when people are MURDERED ON PURPOSE. It does not matter how many people die of cancer to those who lost people at 911, and pretending you can run the numbers in a meaningful way and ignore what is murder and what is not, is just idiotic. Murder makes a difference.
I am sorry for your loss and those of your friends. Yes it is a tragedy and it heinous act and I fully agree with you that it is not comparable to an accident in terms of malevolence behind it. And I agree that murder needs to be punished.
But that does not change the fact that terrorism is not really a big threat, or very dangerous and that the whole security theater at the airport is completely pointless and does not really make anyone safer. When terrorists kill someone, it is a horrible crime, but so is being murdered by some bastard in Flint, Mi. And the latter has a higher chance of happening.
And I am sure that all those that have lost someone to cancer think the same way about those that have lost someone in 9/11. Face it, death is final and loosing a loved one is hard. 9/11 was exceptionally brutal and it is right to ask for retaliation, but a life lost is a life lost and it is a good question where the money is better spent. The whole security theater might safe a couple of hundred lives a year. Preventing DUIs might safe 10,000 a year. And I am sure that someone who has lost a loved one to a drunk driver will be quite angry too and will put it close to murder as well.
And don't even get me started on the hundreds murdered all over Michigan every year. But many cities in Michigan had to close down their police stations (Pontiac does not even have a single one anymore) and in some cities, the remaining police are so overwhelmed, that they wont even send a patrol to a burglary in progress anymore. Now I do have to wonder whether the money wasted on pointless (and not to mention incredibly annoying and expensive) security theater at the airport would not be better spent making cities safer, so businesses and jobs return there.
On the rest. I agree that punishing those responsible with all might is the way to go. But be careful who you hit. Every father who looses a child in a collateral damage is a potential future terrorist.