Has the American reaction to the attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time simply wrong?
David Bell is looking at Americans reaction to 9/11 from the wrong perspective. He is looking at the current number of dead American's and comparing them the number of dead in the past.
But it is no disrespect to the victims of 9/11, or to the men and women of our armed forces, to say that, by the standards of past wars, the war against terrorism has so far inflicted a very small human cost on the United States. As an instance of mass murder, the attacks were unspeakable, but they still pale in comparison with any number of military assaults on civilian targets of the recent past, from Hiroshima on down
His vision is too narrow and focused. We went to war with Afghanistan and Iraq in order to prevent the massive numbers of deaths that would have happen if we just ignored 9/11. Make no mistake, if we didn't retaliate, the terrorists would have taken it for a sign of weakness and continued to kill more people. They would have made sure that the next attempt would have taken more than 3,000 people. We "over-reacted" in order to make sure hundreds of millions of people didn't die. If world leaders had taken care of Hitler before he started invading Europe, millions of people would not have been killed. This time, at least for the time being, the terrorists have been stopped. I think the message should be loud and clear after 9/11. Any terrorist attack on America will result in a massive, insane level of retaliation that would annihilate the terrorists. Once the terrorists get that message I believe they would think twice before attacking American again.
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