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While Obama’s has tempered down the rhetoric regarding the war on terror, the United States continues to dump vast sums of money into this war. A large chunk of the cash goes to contractors who profit rather nicely from this ongoing “war.”
While I do agree that we should be on our guard against danger, the amount spent on protecting us from something should be relative to the actual extent of the threat. While politicians and pundits love to scare us about terrorists, the rational way to assess the relative threat is to look at the numbers. Here are some figures from 2006 showing the breakdown of what kills Americans:
All causes ……………………….. 2,426,264
1 Diseases of heart ……….. 631,636
2 Malignant neoplasms …………….. 559,888
3 Cerebrovascular diseases …………… 137,119
4 Chronic lower respiratory diseases ……… 124,583
5 Accidents (unintentional injuries) …. 121,599
6 Diabetes mellitus ………………. 72,449
7 Alzheimer’s disease………………… 72,432
8 Influenza and pneumonia ………….. 56,326
9 Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis . . . 45,344
10 Septicemia …………………. 34,234
11 Intentional self-harm (suicide) ….. 33,300
12 Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis …… 27,555
13 Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease …………………..23,855
14 Parkinson’s disease………………19,566
15 Assault (homicide)…….. 18,573
All other causes (residual) ……………….. 447,805
As the list shows, terrorism doesn’t make it into the top 15. In fact, when it comes to violent death, the top killers of Americans are Americans (suicide or homicide).
So, what do these numbers entail?
First, it makes more sense to be worried that someone you know will commit suicide or be murdered by another American than it does to worry about him/her being killed by terrorists. Also, if you want to worry about death, you should be most worried about health related issues rather than terrorists.
Second, if the state is supposed to protect citizens from harm (and death is a harm), then the state should be focused more on health care, suicide prevention and crime prevention than on terrorism. By the numbers, all of the above are much more serious threats to Americans.
One obvious reply is that the terrorists might be planning some massive attack that will kill thousands or even millions of Americans. Therefore, the spending and concern about terrorism is justified.
Of course, the obvious reply to this is that there might be some health disaster (some new plague, for example) just around the corner. As such, that should be a top priority for our spending and concern. After all, we know for a fact that plagues and pandemics have occurred and that they can devastate the human population far more than a war. So, if we are going to trot out nightmare scenarios, the horseman of disease should be taken as leading the others.
