Democrat Says Put Terrorism In Perspective And Fix Immigration With A Moratorium

Wonderful advice for Americans was offered in the form
of two articles in the Saturday-Sunday, January 9 and
10, 2010 weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal,
one entitled



"Undressing the Terrorist Threat",
by Paul Campos, a


U.of Colorado professor
and the other,



"Crunching the Risk Numbers"
by


Nate Silver,
a political forecaster.

Here`s how they introduce the present probabilities of
anyone in the US dying from a terrorist attack.

 "I`m not much of a



basketball
player. Middle-age, with a shaky set shot and a bad
knee, I can`t hold my own in a YMCA pickup game, let
alone against more organized competition. But I could
definitely beat LeBron James in a game of one-on-one.
The game just needs to feature two special rules: It
lasts until I score, and when I score, I win.

We might have to play for a few days, and Mr. James`s
point total could well be creeping toward five figures
before the contest ended, but eventually the gritty
gutty competitor with a lunch-bucket work ethic (me)
would subject the world`s greatest basketball player to
a humiliating defeat."

The authors then make a telling connection with the
likely incidence of terrorism:

"The world`s greatest nation seems bent on subjecting
itself to a similarly humiliating defeat, by playing a
game that could be called Terrorball. The first two
rules of Terrorball are:

(1) The game lasts as long as there are terrorists who
want to harm Americans; and

(2) If terrorists should manage to kill or injure or
seriously frighten any of us, they win.

These rules help explain the otherwise inexplicable wave
of hysteria that has swept over our government in the
wake of the failed attempt by a rather pathetic aspiring
terrorist to blow up a plane on Christmas Day. For two
weeks now, this mildly troubling but essentially minor
incident has dominated headlines and airwaves, and sent
politicians from the president on down scurrying to
outdo each other with statements that such incidents are
"unacceptable," and that all sorts of new and better
procedures will be implemented to make sure nothing like
this ever happens again."

Of course if you were that brave Dutch film maker who
leaped on the accused bomber, Nigerian national


Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab,
23, on Christmas Day as Northwest Airlines Flight 253
approached Detroit Metropolitan Airport from Amsterdam
you might not regard this as a "mildly troubling but
essentially minor incident", but the authors are
absolutely correct to put this incident and in fact 9/11
into statistical perspective.  In his
"Crunching" piece, Silver says " in the decade of
the 2000s, only about one passenger for every 25 million
was killed in a terrorist attack aboard an American
commercial airliner (all of the fatalities



were on 9/11).
By contrast, a person has about a one in 500,000 chance
each year of being


struck by lightning."

While many Americans "know" the relative safety
of air travel over riding in the family car, the concept
of playing even a remotely dangerous game of Russian
Roulette still frightens most of us inordinately. 
Well, these authors say, in effect, "Get over it". 
And I agree.

How lethal is terrorism.  Silver`s "Crunching"
piece reports

"Overall, academic and governmental databases report,
terrorist attacks killed a total of about 5,300 people
in the most highly developed nations since the end of
the Cold War in 1991, a rate of about 300 per year. The
chance of a Westerner being killed by a terrorist is
exceedingly low: about a one in three million each year,
or the same chance an American will be killed by a




tornado."

Yes, Folks, these powerful pieces argue very correctly
with statistics that we will be terrorized by terrorism
only if we let it. Campos and Silver make a credible
case designed to allay fears and encourage backbone
among Americans.

To the end of suggesting more American backbone about
risks including terrorism, I say, "Bravo". After
learning last Summer that my alma mater`s publishing
arm, the Yale University Press, cancelled the scheduled
publication in an academic work because among other
cartoons the book contained 12


cartoons spoofing Mohammed
that appeared in a


Danish
newspaper


four years ago.

 I was truly disgusted at my


alma mater`s weak-spined behavior.

Apparently, Yale`s pantywaist decision, which also
affects any future pictures of Mohammed, came after
consultations with Muslim clerics, diplomats and
counter-terrorism officials. (New Criterion
editor Roger Kimball


wrote

that it may also have been made out of fear of  Saudi
donors.) As you recall, after the initial appearance
of the cartoons, which are available on the Internet,
violent Muslim protests resulted in


widespread riots
and more than a hundred deaths. 

Even so the authors of "Undressed" and
"Crunching" might dismiss
more than a hundred deaths as statistically insignificant in measuring
terrorist impact.  After all, they note "consider
traffic accidents. All sorts of measures could be taken
to reduce the current rate of automotive carnage from
120 fatalities a day—from lowering speed limits, to
requiring mechanisms that make it impossible to start a
car while


drunk,
to even more restrictive measures. Some of these
measures may well be worth taking. But the point is that
at present we seem to consider 43,000 traffic deaths per
year an acceptable cost to pay for driving big fast
cars."

 From all causes, they report that 6700 people die daily
in the USA.

What truly was not apparent in their calculations was
the growing migrations of Muslims into Europe and the
US, which bring not only potential terrorists but also a
religion which simply does not in any way square with
our predominant culture.  Again these authors could
dismiss the raw Muslim numbers as low, compared to



the killings committed by drug lords
both here and in Mexico.  However, just the sheer
immensity of overall immigration numbers of people of
all races and creeds  both legal and illegal into
the USA represents a major source of true concern.

Bottom line: We need an immediate moratorium on all
immigration until real immigration reform can be
enacted, certainly not another amnesty for illegal
aliens now here like the Gutierrez bill.

On the subject of the War on Drugs, these "Undressed" 
authors make a lot of sense to me:


 

"Yet not treating Americans as adults has costs. For
instance, it became the official policy of our federal
government to try to make America `a
drug-free nation`
25 years ago. After spending hundreds of billions of
dollars and imprisoning millions of people, it`s slowly
beginning to become possible for some politicians to
admit that fighting a necessarily endless drug war in
pursuit of an impossible goal might be a bad idea. How
long will it take to admit that an endless war on
terror, dedicated to making America a terror-free
nation, is equally nonsensical?"

We really need to
fix this stupid situation, and also gaining tax revenues
in the process.

So what should we do about this threat, which clearly
has been manifested in many terrorist acts in Europe,
the USA and elsewhere with the prospect of many more to
come?    The "Undressed" authors
again persuasively argue that

"A little intelligence and a few drops of courage remind
us that life is full of risk, and that of all the risks
we confront in America every day, terrorism is a very
minor one. Taking prudent steps to reasonably minimize
the tiny threat we face from a few fanatic criminals
need not grant them the attention they crave. Continuing
to play Terrorball, on the other hand, guarantees that
the terrorists will always win, since it places the bar
for what counts as success for them practically on the
ground."

I have earlier argued (in my recent VDARE.com


National ID card piece)
that the better use of technology to screen folks
entering our places of public transport would help. 
However,  for example,  if explosives can be
strapped onto a person in a NYC apartment, that suicide
bomber can go out undetected into the street and board a
bus and blow it and its passengers to smithereens.  
The same thing could be repeated again and again.

The ultimate irony in our present preoccupation with
terrorism may be its potential positive effect on the
urgent need for immigration reform.  The huge wave
of immigration which has swept 50 million or more
immigrants and their offspring into the USA since the
major change in US immigration law in 1965  has
provided no measurable benefits and increased our cost
of living by every dimension. 

In the face of utterly destructive new attempts for new
legislation before the Democratic Congress to legalize
12 million or more aliens here illegally, we constantly
fail to assess real opportunities such as withdrawing
from dangerous wars which create more terrorists. 

Our national leaders have bad perception problems. 
In a January 11th NewsMax story, 2008presidential
candidate, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani,



declared that

"[T]he



Fort Hood shootings
and the Christmas Day bombing incident show Obama and
his advisers have been "fundamentally wrong" in their
approach to the war on terror. Giuliani, who was New
York`s mayor when terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001,
told MSNBC`s "Morning Joe" viewers that the president
has tried to let "political correctness trump reality."
Giuliani said the Obama administration came into power
with the belief that President George W. Bush`s response
to the 9/11 attacks was unnecessarily severe, and had
alienated America`s potential allies abroad.

"They`d gone too far, Bush had overreacted, we make the
war on terror worse if we emphasize it too much — this
is what they truly believed," Giuliani said. "But they
were fundamentally wrong."

I wish he would turn his attention to real immigration
reform.

While great danger from the


terrorists
(and with drug lords) lies in our preoccupation and fear
which these authors suggest, a greater threat keeps
moving relentlessly forward on the backs of the
businesses and others whose greedy rush for cheap labor
keeps logic, fairness and indeed the welfare of our
nation hostage to real reform of our broken immigration
system.

What better time to initiate an immigration reform than
this prolonged economic crisis, which many see as
lasting for years?  We have always needed to
carefully select entrants of all races and countries
before they are allowed to become citizens, but based on
national need, not done as we have


since 1965. 
Sadly we stopped doing that long ago. Now, we need a
full stop


moratorium on immigration. 
More pitiful, in this great nation, the alleged #1 Super
Power, with the leadership we now have, the chances of
enacting this needed time out are slight.

If immigration laws that truly benefit our country had
long ago been passed by a Congress not bought and paid
for by our military industrial complex (how about in
1986), perhaps we would not be in such desperate straits
both economically, environmentally and with our national
security.

Donald A. Collins [email
him], is a freelance writer living in Washington DC and a former long time member of the board of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. His views are his own.