Future conversation with The Abstracted Daughter:
TAE: "six years before you were born a horrible catastrophe occurred that forever changed America."
TAD: "9/11? Boring! We learned about in history class. Dad, did you know that the number of Americans killed in 9/11 was 3,000 but the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam war was 20 times that? Almost 60,000 people! And the number of Americans killed in World War II was 150 times the number killed in 9/11; 450,000 Americans!
TAE: Yes, I know.
TAD: So why is 9/11 such a big deal?
TAE: Um.
Now that we don't have loopy neocons in the White House, throwing 9/11 up like a banner every time they want to violate civil and human rights, I have to ask: how long will 9/11 be a big deal?
This is a question I wouldn't dare ask 2 years ago, and last year cloaked in the above imagined conversation. But it becomes a valid question. In the long stream of human history, the deaths in New York City, the Pentagon, and New York City are a miniscule blip on the radar. Somewhere around 3,000 people died. Meanwhile, 41,000 Americans die every year in vehicle related accidents. 63,000 Americans die every year from the flu or from side-effects of the flu. Alcohol is linked to as many as 75,000 American deaths a year. It is believed that over 100,000 Americans die every year from side effects to prescribed medicine. 162,000 Americans die every year from cardiovascular issues like strokes and heart attacks.
My point, here, is that huge, unfathomably huge numbers of Americans are dying every year in this country from things that are basically preventable. Crack down on obesity, and cardiovascular deaths plunge. Crack down on binge drinking and alcoholism, and alcohol related deaths plunge. Create a better method to determine if patients will have side effects to medicines (or reactions between multiple medications) and nearly 100,000 might live. Make cars safer (or make them drive themselves) and eliminate 40,000 deaths a year.
All of these deaths are, to a certain extent, preventable. We see the deaths coming. We see the alcoholic drinking himself to death years before he succumbs to liver cirrhosis. We see the obese, elderly person struggling to walk in and out of the Golden Corral SuperBuffet years before they have a quintuple bypass, and we see their quintuple bypass years before that person dies from their third heart attack. We see kids driving motorcycles with a higher power/weight ratio than jet fighters. We see people driving while texting, driving drunk, or driving recklessly, long before we see the massive car accident and the ambulance.
9/11 was probably not preventable. The 9/11 commission argued rightly that American intelligence groups should have collaborated more and shared information more readily. The CIA should have let Billy Waugh shoot Osama bin Laden back in the 80's when Waugh was tracking Carlos The Jackal. Another 9/11 is preventable, I argue, Bush argued, everyone argued. Maybe the Patriot Act was an extreme measure to further this goal, but nevertheless, Americans are safer from terrorists than we have been in a long time.
Why then, are we not aggressively pursuing methods to prevent other American deaths that are preventable? If 3,000 American deaths in 2001 spawned a $1.5 trillion war staged on two fronts, why doesn't 40,000 vehicle-related deaths create a similar outrage and response?
How do over 100,000 people a year die because they were fat, but we as a people do nothing, and the government doesn't do anything either?
My point is, when you look at 9/11 by itself, it seems like an atrocious act of murder, with a calculated and broad response. But when you look at American deaths per year and their causes, then compare that to the amount of money spent to prevent further deaths from those causes, 9/11 seems like a gross overreaction.
Someday soon, people will say "we overreacted after 9/11."
_
0 comments:
Post a Comment