To think about…
Terrorism as a way of life?
Will Americans eventually adapt to living with terrorism as a part of modern life like Israel has done? Will the resulting deaths eventually become “local news” as the 100+ daily traffic deaths in the USA now are? Who hears about these 100 people killed in auto accidents—mostly local newspapers tell the story of local people dying. Americans have become accustomed to death on the highways a “a part of life.” Or how about the number of people who die every single day of simple poverty—50,000? Who hears of these people? We have come to “live with” these deaths as “a pert of life.” The question is will this eventually happen to death-by-terrorism? Will losing a dozen people a day eventually become “a part of the overhead” of future life the random and occasional chance someone will get killed by a terrorist attack?
Can the war on terrorism succeed or, is our concern temporary and we will eventually accommodate to it and it will lose its newsworthyness? Is the war on terrorism destined to become like the “war on poverty” or the “war on drugs” –an unwinnable war which we carry on in suppression mode as we “learn to live with it” in the future? Either way…. how will accommodation to terrorism or total victory over it change us and our lives in the future?
So what do you think?
Keith
Drury 7/21/05