15 Years After 9/11: Are We Safer?

14 thoughts on “15 Years After 9/11: Are We Safer?”

1. Several articles I've seen recently have made the argument that the number by war and terrorism killed worldwide is trending down.

   a data heavy account: figures 7, 8 and 9 at  http://www.systemicpeace.org/conflicttrends.html

   another, focused on "war": https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace-after-1945/

   And an interview with Steven Pinker, who makes an extensive argument over a long range of time: http://www.vox.com/2016/8/16/12486586/2016-worst-year-ever-violence-trump-terrorism

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2. Too bad the safety, health and even the lives of NYC residents and first responders was not a Bush administration priority at the time and getting Republican congressional support for our 9/11 heroes has continued to be like pulling teeth. Here's what HRC had it say about it in 2003.

   It was 26 August 2003, almost two years since 9/11, and the sickening plume of smoke that hung over Ground Zero in lower Manhattan had long since dissipated. But steam was rising from the steps of city hall, three blocks away, where Hillary Clinton was venting her rage at the Bush administration for having lied to the American people.

   “I don’t think any of us expected that our government would knowingly deceive us about something as sacred as the air we breathe,” she said, her voice tightening in anger. “The air that our children breathe in schools, that our valiant first responders were facing on the pile.”

   Surrounded by firefighters and the doctors who were treating them for respiratory and other illnesses incurred when they worked on the massive mound of Ground Zero rubble – the “pile”, as it was known – the junior senator from New York was incandescent. Audiotape recorded at the time by WNYC, the city’s public radio affiliate, captures a Clinton quite unlike the controlled public figure who is now a step away from the White House.

   Andrea Bernstein, senior editor politics and policy for WNYC, listens back to Hillary Clinton’s comments in the wake of 9/11.

   The Clinton who emerges from the WNYC tapes is passionate, raw and unrestrained. Above all, she is livid. She had just learned that the Bush administration instructed officials of the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reassure New Yorkers after 9/11 that the air over Ground Zero was safe. In fact, they had a pretty good idea that it was a toxic pall of asbestos, cement, glass dust, heavy metals, fuels and PCBs.

   “I am outraged,” Clinton went on. “In the immediate aftermath, the first couple of days, nobody could know. But a week later? Two weeks later? Two months later? Six months later? Give me a break!”

   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/09/hillary-clinton-9-11-attacks-response

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   1. Wrong question, CPOLS. 

      The question should be are we sufficiently safe following the loss of privacy, loss of rights, loss of *democracy* that followed the 9/11 attack.

      This is where you drive some accountability back to the Bush/Republican regime that failed us so badly that day, and who then politicized the response and overreacted to completely misread the threat. 

      Hillary had it right in '03 but our short attention spans, and our horribly superficial media have allowed the argument to be framed otherwise.

      Cheney still trying to evade responsibility by blaming Obama. Ari Fleischer revels in the loss. Republicans ignore the "generals on the ground" in keeping us hooked on oil and ignorant of its affects.

      Q: Are we sufficiently safe following the loss of privacy, loss of rights, loss of *democracy* that followed the 9/11 attack?

      A: No.

       

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      1. So I'm ColPols now?

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   2. I don't think anyone foresaw  our government getting involved in two wars, one of them unprovoked. I don't think we foresaw our government kidnapping I mean extraditing. I don't think we foresaw our government engaging in torture. "Enhanced Interrogation" such as waterboarding is torture. This country prosecuted two japanese officers for war crimes because they used waterboarding which we claimed was torture. I guess if we are inflicting torture it's all good.

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3. I will venture that one of the things that will keep us safe is a transformation away from oil as the driver of the world economy. Converting to locally generated, free, solar and wind energy as fast as possible and removing fossil fuels from our energy paradigm will help to disengage us from the Mid-east faster than anything else we can do.

   Just sayin'

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   1.  Maybe then we could have a more rational policy towards countries like Saudi Arabia with the capability of imposing stringent sanctions until they stop funding international terrorist organizations and promoting  the ideology those organizations espouse.

      They're free to be as a intolerant and as they want and to promote the most repressive form of Islam they want including the barbaric treatment of women and dissenters. They are a sovereign country. But we should be free  register our disapproval the same we do with countries like North Korea. The idea that they are our allies is ludicrous since they are the primary source of funding and ideology for terrorist extremists.

      In a new energy economy the free world wouldn't have to put up with them.

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4. Oh and about all those GOP  congressional leaders and their "Never Forget" speeches and photo ops…..

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/never-forgetting-911-in-the-worst-possible-way_us_57d4431ce4b03d2d459abd05?section=&

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   1. This is making the rounds on the web … http://www.stonekettle.com/2016/09/renegade-911.html?m=1

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      1. He's spot on. I avoided T.V. all day 'cause I just didn't want to hear it. The "yay for us, aren't we great" crap. 

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         1. Yes…. 9/11 was a terrible thing but other people in other countries have been and continue to suffer one 9/11 after another with no monuments, no memorials, no grief counseling, no nothing but more 9/11s. Millions of us aren't fleeing for our lives. Our children aren't starving in besieged cities. We don't have to go to bed at night worrying about bombs dropping on us as a possibility any more likely than being killed by a car crashing through our bedroom wall and few of us lay awake at night worrying about things like that.

            Maybe it's time to get a grip. Whether we’re a little more or a little less safe, we’re pretty damn safe and a whole lot safer from terrorism than we are from traffic accidents or lightning strikes.

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5. Are we safer since 9/11? In some ways, yes:

   What's killing us in the USA:

   According to the CDC,* deaths by homicide are down since 2000. Suicides, however, are up, especially by older white males. Deaths from AIDS have been cut by 2/3. Deaths by "malignant neoplasm", i.e., cancerous tumors, are down. So are deaths by heart disease and obesity. And "unintentional causes", i.e., accidents.  But life expectancy increased for African-Americans, and for Hispanic infants. Still not at parity with white folks, but getting there.

   Terrorism is not killing us in the US of A. Terrorism, whether by Islamic Jihadists, or Christian white supremacists, is barely a blip on the cause of death continuum. You're more likely to be crushed to death by your own furniture than killed by a terrorist of any religious stripe.

   Mother Jones has dug into the "Which religion is deadlier – Islam or Christianity?" question. On a 20 year timeline including Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma IRS building, which killed 168 people, Christians have the death stats, hands down. But if we just go from 2001 and include the 2016 Pulse attack, and consider Mateen a Jihadist, rather than just a screwed-up homophobe, then Jihadists are ahead in the body count, according to the New America security project.

   New America has also looked at the effects of the NSA surveillance (post 9/11) on public safety. They see no correlation. Only 4 suspects were foiled in their plots by NSA data collection, as opposed to 213 foiled by traditional investigative methods.   So we have an invasion of privacy without real public benefit.

   Then there are deaths related to climate change. The 2014 report, "Deaths Attributed to Heat, Cold, and Other Weather Events in the United States, 2006–2010", states:

   Anderson and Bell analyzed daily high temperatures and mortality in 43 U.S. Cities during 1987–2005 and found that all-cause mortality increased 3.7% during Heat waves, and that an increase of 1 degree Fahrenheit was associated with a statistically significant increase in mortality (44).

   * See the tables on page 117 of the Center for Disease Control's publication, "Health, United States, 2015"

   Conclusion: There are plenty of things that might kill you, including heart disease, obesity, cancer, a heat wave, and your own furniture, but probably not a terrorist attack. And the NSA spying on you won't help with any of them.

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   1. But if your Ottoman kills you, doesn't thatcount as. Islamic terrorism?  

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