Re: WTC Bombing

[christian11@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

David,

I don't know what list you've been reading, but I haven't seen any of the kind of one-size-fits-all analyses that you refer to in your post. If you believe that the market is a state of nature, perhaps it's disconcerting to read that the US' obnoxious attempt to foist its version of market rationality and business civilization on every corner of the globe might have painful, awful consequences. (By the way, that's not a justification: the CIA invented the term "blowback" in reference to just such consequences.) But that doesn't make it less true.

Perhaps you also failed to notice that it is precisely by leaving the risks of air travel to be priced by the market (rather than subject to bad big gov't regulation) that US travel has made us as vulnerable as it has. (ie If we have too few deaths, we're either lucky or spending too much on safety.) Even the WSJ admitted as much yesterday, though somehow I doubt that you will be haranguing the CEO's of American and United for their moral confusion.

And as for that, it's probably matter of perspective. To Republican Manicheists, confusion is another word for complexity; the clash of civilizations that you obviously fantacize about will bankrupt the US long before it gets rid of terrorism or the US' fanatic enemies. There are other roads, even conceding the necessity of armed force. But they require a worldview that goes beyond good and evil and loony apocalypticism.

Christian