i just couldn’t resist the timing of these two events.<\/p>\n
yesterday, on august 18, the World Markets Research Centre<\/a> released their Global Terrorism Index 2003\/4<\/a>. i haven’t read this report (i don’t have $1500 burning a hole in my pocket at the moment), but, some other people have, and they reveal an interesting tiny bit of information. The author of the report is cited in this<\/a> AP story (courtsey yahoo): “The report says the country least likely to be attacked by terrorists is North Korea.”<\/p>\n today, attorney general john ashcroft kicked off his campaign to “clear up some myths” about and build support for the usa patriot act with a speech before the american enterprise institute<\/a>. this is apparently the first stop in a three-week, 18-city tour, but the details are being kept quiet. (the ACLU<\/a> apparently thinks this is to discourage protest<\/a>).<\/p>\n “If we knew then what we know now, we would have passed the Patriot Act six months before Sept. 11 rather than six weeks after the attacks” — ashcroft, AEI, August 19, 2003.<\/p>\n i guess the usa patriot act has worked so well that we are so “secure” that our attorney general can take a few weeks off to make some speeches. ashcroft apparently also cited today’s bombing of the un hq in iraq as evidence of a continuing threat. and that gives me an opening….<\/p>\n i observe that with 146,000<\/a> [heavily armed] soldiers on the ground, full military “control” of the country, 10,000+ dead iraqi soldiers, 6000+ dead iraqi civilians, 200+ dead american [coalition] soldiers – that the un headquarters in iraq wasn’t “safe from terrorists.”<\/p>\n iraq is roughly the same land area as california, with about 70% of the population (almost 33.9 million<\/a> california residents, compared to about 24.6 million<\/a> iraqi residents).<\/p>\n let’s return to our model of homeland security for a moment. north korea has about 1 million<\/a> troops for about 22.5 million<\/a> residents, and, according to the WMRC, is the safest country in the world (from terrorism). so about 1 soldier for every 22.5 people is “safest.”<\/p>\n extrapolating, maybe we can “secure” iraq with 1.1 million troops, and maybe we can “secure” california with 1.5 million troops (it’s a regime-change thing), and the whole united states with 13 million troops. then again, maybe not.<\/p>\n that’s not the kind of security i want, no matter how many cities ashcroft visits pitching expanded police-state powers. i appreciate the best intentions here, but this is the road to hell.<\/p>\n update<\/strong>: surprisingly, there is a flaw in the logic. israel has 550,000<\/a> active servicemembers “protecting” 6.1 million<\/a> residents, and is most assuredly, “not safe.” so, a 1-to-11 ratio of troops isn’t adequate. i guess you can’t beat the terrorists with an army.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" i just couldn’t resist the timing of these two events. yesterday, on august 18, the World Markets Research Centre released their Global Terrorism Index 2003\/4. i haven’t read this report (i don’t have $1500 burning a hole in my pocket at the moment), but, some other people have, and they reveal an interesting tiny bit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}