Putting the Terror Threat
In Perspective
There Are Far Fewer
Terror Attacks Now Than In the 1970s
By Washingtons Blog
February 04, 2015 "ICH"
- The terror threat is greatly
exaggerated. After all, the type of
counter-terror experts who frequently appear
on the mainstream news are motivated to
hype the terror threat, because it
drums
up
business for them.
The same is true for
government employees. As former FBI
assistant director Thomas Fuentes
put it last week:
If you’re submitting
budget proposals for a law enforcement
agency, for an intelligence agency,
you’re not going to submit the proposal
that “We won the war on terror and
everything’s great,” cuz the first thing
that’s gonna happen is your budget’s
gonna be cut in half.
You know, it’s my
opposite of Jesse Jackson’s “Keep Hope
Alive”—it’s “Keep Fear Alive.” Keep it
alive.
Fearmongering also serves
political goals. For example,
FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, a
top constitutional and military law expert,
Time magazine, the Washington Post and
others have all said that U.S.
government officials “were trying to create
an atmosphere of fear in which the American
people would give them more power”. Indeed,
the former Secretary of Homeland Security
Tom Ridge
admitted that he was
pressured to raise terror alerts to help
Bush win reelection. Former U.S. National
Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski – also
a top foreign policy advisor to President
Obama – told the Senate that the war on
terror is a
“a mythical historical narrative”.
Indeed, the government
justifies its geopolitical goals – including
seizing more power at home, and
overthrowing oil-rich countries – by
hyping the terror menace. So the
government wants you to be
scared out of your pants by the risk of
terrorism. No wonder national security
employees
see a terrorist under
every bush.
But terrorism has actually
dramatically declined in the United
States. Daniel Benjamin – the Coordinator
for Counterterrorism at the United States
Department of State from 2009 to 2012 –
noted last month (at 10:22):
The total number of
deaths from terrorism in recent years
has been extremely small in the West.
And the threat itself has been
considerably reduced. Given all
the headlines people don’t have that
perception; but if you look at the
statistics that is the case.
Indeed, the Washington
Post
noted in 2013 that the number of terror
attacks in the U.S. has plummeted
since the 1970s:
Indeed, you’re now much
more likely to be killed by
brain-eating parasites, texting while
driving, toddlers, lightning, falling out of
bed, alcoholism, food poisoning, a financial
crash, obesity, medical errors or
“autoerotic asphyxiation” than by
terrorists.
Obviously, a huge number
of innocent Americans – 3,000 – were killed
on 9/11 … a single terror attack.
However, 9/11 – like the
Boston Bombing (and the Paris terror attack)
– happened
because mass surveillance replaced
traditional anti-terror measures.
Similarly, Cheney and company were
criminally negligent.
And the “War on Terror”
has been counter-productive, and only
increased the terrorism problem.
If we had stuck with
tried-and-true anti-terror techniques,
high-fatality events like 9/11 would
never have happened.
Source -
http://www.washingtonsblog.com