Proportionality, part deux

Okay, so both my readers are familiar with two recurring pet peeves of mine, which would be proportionality and the global war on terror. I ran across a factoid that makes the two come together in an interesting way. The Bush Administration has come damn near a preemptive war with Iran to prevent them from getting nuclear arms. The morons in charge want us to believe it’s the absolute biggest threat in the world for a Muslim nation to have nukes, and Obama has even nodded to it. (Oh wait. Pakistan has them and they’re an ally. Ignore this, please.) While a nasty concept, there are worse things in the world than Iran with nukes. We faced thousands and thousands of nukes in the USSR for decades, including most of my life, and nothing bad happened. And they were VERY advanced and VERY well tested.

So here’s the factoid that makes the whole matter so ridiculous. The nuke that North Korea set off (and they are WAY ahead of Iran) was estimated at equivalent to 400 tons of TNT. Oooh. Sounds scary. But it turns out that a fully fueled 757 like the ones that hit the WTC each packed the equivalent of 900 tons of TNT. Large commercial aircraft are common as dandelions, and with the airlines in meltdown, they’re downright affordable.

Get my drift? The biggest freaking threat in the world is a loose (likely extremely unsophisticated) nucular (sic) weapon, worth another preemptive war, but anybody and his cousin can buy a used large airliner and fly it wherever they want. When we were in Tucson last year we saw the huge airplane mothball yard, and it goes on forever. Lots of planes out there if anyone needs one.

Once again, the desire to make us blindly fearful, and the lack of seeing things in proportion leads to ridiculous policies.

And another thing. Last week Peggy Noonan wrote an obnoxious column with the basic idea being that, “Say what you want about W, he kept us safe.” And all of the Democrats fear that two words will be added, “unlike Obama.”

These smug assholes love to use the line that since we haven’t been hit again yet, that W deserves credit. I can usually shut this one up by asking if the speaker will take an oath to switch parties in the event of an attack on American soil. No takers yet. And here’s the punch line- if George W. Bush kept us so fucking safe, what’s he got to say to the families of the nearly 3,000 dead in Manhattan, Northern Virginia and Pennsylvania, not to mention over 4,200 dead Americans in Iraq? The attacks on the World Trade Center were on his watch after he ignored Clinton administration warnings. In their arrogance, any concern of the Clinton’s was deemed unimportant. Thanks, assholes.

He kept us safe? More like he tattooed targets on our foreheads.