Is Terrorism a Mortal Threat?
Note: While Pat Buchanan frequently exhibits racist tendencies and abhorent opinions — usually directed at immigrants and people of color — he provides some salient points and facts in this article that could be useful in discussions of how to mitigate the march to war against Iran.
A column by Pat Buchanan
WASHINGTON — It may have been politically incorrect to publish the thoughts on the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, but what Colin Powell had to say to GQ magazine needs to be heard.
Terrorism, said Powell, is not a mortal threat to America.
“What is the greatest threat facing us now?” Powell asked. “People will say it’s terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?”
History and common sense teach that Powell speaks truth.
Since Sept. 11, 100,000 Americans have been murdered — as many as we lost in Vietnam, Korea and Iraq combined. Yet, not one of these murders was the work of an Islamic terrorist, and all of them, terrible as they are, did not imperil the survival of our republic.
Terrorists can blow up our buildings, assassinate our leaders and bomb our malls and stadiums. They cannot destroy us. Assume the worst. Terrorists smuggle an atom bomb into New York harbor or into Washington, D.C., and detonate it.
Horrible and horrifying as that would be — perhaps 100,000 dead and wounded — it would not mean the end of the U.S. It would more likely mean the end of Iran, or whatever nation at which the U.S. chose to direct its rage and retribution.
Consider. Between 1942 and 1945, Germany and Japan, nations not one-tenth the size of the U.S., saw their cities firebombed, and their soldiers and civilians slaughtered in the millions. Japan lost an empire. Germany lost a third of its territory. Both were put under military occupation. Yet, 15 years later, Germany and Japan were the second and third most prosperous nations on Earth, the dynamos of their respective continents, Europe and Asia.
Powell’s point is not that terrorism is not a threat. It is that the terror threat must be seen in perspective, that we ought not frighten ourselves to death with our own propaganda, that we cannot allow fear of terror to monopolize our every waking hour or cause us to give up our freedom.
For all the blather of a restored caliphate, the “Islamofascists,” as the neocons call them, cannot create or run a modern state or pose a mortal threat to America. The gross national product of the entire Arab world is not equal to Spain’s. Oil aside, its exports are equal to Finland’s. [more]