A Percentage of the Population

Listening to an interview with one of Petraeus’ warrior/intellectuals: Brig.Gen. H.R. McMaster, on NPR this morning, I heard him make this statement about the “terrorists” in Iraq: “They rely upon a certain percentage of the population looking to them as their protectors.”

Well to me, that strategy sounds very familiar. It sounds like the strategy of the current people in charge of our executive branch of government.

Last night on the PRI program “Marketplace” I heard Ben “Bueller…Bueller?” Stein, fear mongering in a commentary. To echo Stein: How can we be so complacent when the terrorists want to kill us?

FDR brilliantly said: “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” This is my perspective. I have more fear of dying in an automobile accident than in a terrorist attack. This is because statistician in me tells me this is far more probable. When someone uses fear to motivate a population, or a certain percentage of the population, it is because they do not hold the moral high ground. Because they have no other means of moving the population to support their policy. I would argue that in our current situation the real reasons for the current policies cannot be made public. They would be completely and utterly unsupportable by a large percentage of the population.

There are simple solutions to the threat of terrorism. The support for terrorism is not because “they” hate our way of life. No "they" hate our policies, and the injustices and inequities those policies create. Although the solutions are simple they are not easy. In fact, politically, I would put them close to impossible. But we can move away from extremism, back to a more even handed policies. Policies that seek justice, and economic equity for all peoples. If you look at history, in the 1960’sand 1970’s the United States was much admired in the Near and Middle East. I would ask rhetorically: What has changed? and why?