Before I get into today's topic I've got a multiple choice question for you:
The worst way to be murdered is
A. By an estranged spouse
B. By a street punk during a robbery
C. By a deranged co-worker
D. By a suicidal terrorist
Despite the rather bizarre nature of this question, it is a serious question related to this diary. So give it some consideration.
And the correct answer is...
None of the above. Yep, you guessed it, it's a trick question. But it is, none the less, a serious one.
The intense focus on terrorism by the Bush administration (i.e. they answered "D") and it's many supporters has, in essence, created a scale of murder far too heavily skewed toward terrorism.
Before jumping all over the Bush administration, let's take a step back and look at this "scale" in the bigger picture. Because we live in a complex world it is completely unrealistic to consider every murder equal. An innocent child lured away to his/her death at the hands of a stranger is different than a drug dealer offing another street thug. A mentally ill person in an insane rage who kills someone is drastically different than a calculating serial killer.
More recently the image of another kind of killer, the terrorist, has been indelibly burned into our collective psyche. And rightly so - a single terrorist act that results in almost 3,000 innocent lives lost must be given top consideration.
Furthermore, the forces driving the terrorist attacks and their implications go far beyond the circumstances of a street robbery gone bad. The terrorist attacks were not only an assault on innocent individuals, but also on the United States itself. They were an attack on our way of life, our culture, and to many citizens, "our" religion. The attacks had global political and religious motivations, with religion in particular becoming both a victim and being an instigator.
The events of 9/11, quite simply, can not be treated the same as the majority of murders in the United States.
Yet if you were to ask the relatives of the victims in the non-terrorist murders since 9/11, I'm sure the overwhelming majority would not find comfort in the fact that their loved ones didn't die as a victim of terrorism.
The bottom line is that there is no easy answer. That every victim of murder is a life unjustly taken. And there is no simple decision to focus resources in one area at the expense of lives lost in another.
Although there are no simple answers, there are bad decisions. And, not surprisingly, this is where Bush comes back into the picture. To make fighting terrorism and perpetrators of 9/11 the top priority was a no brainer with almost universal support. But the efforts to address the many non-terrorism dangers we all face pales in comparison to the fight against terrorism. And this is where Bush has gone drastically wrong.
The resources, lives, and money spent in Iraq was primarily about terrorism (at least if you believe what the White House says). The reorganization to create Homeland Security was motivated by terrorism (if you believe the White House). And massive amounts of money and resources, from the national, to state, to local level, have been reallocated to fight terrorism.
At what cost? Yesterday the Washington Post had a front page article on the "surge" in violent crime in the U.S. While the blame was attributed to a number of factors, the one that stood out the most was the reallocation of Federal criminal resources.
The Justice Department inspector general's office has reported sharp declines in the number of FBI agents and investigations dedicated to traditional crimes since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In addition, the International Association of Chiefs of Police says that law enforcement programs at the Justice Department have been cut by more than $2 billion since 2002 and that overall funding for such programs has been reduced to levels of a decade ago.
Without access to highly classified information it's impossible to say how effective the overall efforts of the Bush plan have been in stopping terrorism. We can say two things: no further attacks have occurred in the United States and that world wide terrorist activities have increased. Are we safer from terrorists because of actions like the Iraq war and the massive reallocation of resources domestically?
Unfortunately, the answer is unclear.
What is clear are the rising domestic violent crime statistics. We may or may not be safer from terrorism, but we are losing ground to domestic dangers.
And only those who answered "D" to the question at the top should feel safer. The rest of us should not.
Accidental shooting deaths may be several notches below motor vehicle deaths, but I would have to guess that the probability of going this way is still significantly higher than death by a terrorist attack.
If our government placed the highest value on life then we'd be seeing much more to address problems that could result in death or serious injury. But the reality is that when economics and business are mixed in the waters become very muddy.
In some cases I'd blame politicians and business leaders for considering business interests and making money above our physical well being. The flip side is to consider that if our economy fails or seriously stumbles there will be negative impacts (higher crime, poor living conditions, poor education, hunger, etc) that also result in unhealthy and dangerous situations.
I'd say that currently, and pretty much for most of our history, government has focused more on business than it should. But it's a tricky balancing act - and I for one would like to see it more balanced toward looking out for our health and well being.
In the case of rising crime rates, the Bush administration has focused so much on terrorism that they've failed to keep domestic crime in check. Which is just another manifestation of the same problem - allocation of resources and effort that focus narrowly in specific areas and don't maximize the whole.