9-11: Should Anyone in America Care Anymore?

On September 11th 2001, the terrorist attacks on the World trade centre cost over 3,000 innocent lives.  It was an audacious and terrible terrorist attack one which shook the world.  What I say now is not meant to reduce that terror, or to underestimate the devastation of the lives of the relatives of those innocent dead. 

However, I think its important now, eight years on, that American’s and the world put the terrorist attacks into proportion.   Perhaps it wasn’t possible at the time, but now I think now it’s essential.

Firstly, in the last eight years in the USA approximately 3,000 people have died in terrorist incidents. Compare that to the number of people who have died in lightening strikes, about 720.   So, terrorist has been slightly more important as a cause of death as lightning strikes, although I expect lightening strikes will catch up.   Compare that to the number of people who died in car accidents in that time, that’s about 320,000 about a hundred times as many.   Or in fact, if you want a combat comparison, think about the number of people a day that died in the battle of the Somme, that’s about 20,000, just in one day remember. 

That’s the first point which I think is important, terrorism, and September 11th killed quite a lot of people, in one short, sharp shock.  But in reality, in comparison to every day deaths even in America, the number really is pretty small. 

So, aside from the relatively minor number of deaths, didn’t September 11th change the world and blast in a terrible new dawn?  Well, terrorism isn’t new, and war isn’t new.  So, to see how anything really changed., in any significant way. 

I think my point is that American’s should look back on September 11th as a terrible event, but one that just happens sometimes.  It is part of the cost of being the most powerful state in the world.  A cost that, at the end of the day, really isn’t that massive.