The following was originally posted on The Citizens Briefing Book:

Our nation is not at war with the nation of Iraq. Referring to the Iraq War is absurd!

Our nation is not at war with the nation of Afghanistan.

We need to refer to our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan as an occupation. Using the occupation frame eliminates the fear of losing, enables our departure, reduces the chances of bankrupting our nation, and supports our troops by bring them home.

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Terror is a state of mind. We can’t win a “War on Terror.” We will never defeat terrorism with just military action. We are only creating more terrorists with our military actions. Worse yet, we elevate these criminals to warrior status in a jihad. We give them far more credit than they are due and enable recruitment. We must treat them as lowly “common criminals.”

As Colin Powell said on September 13, 2001 in an interview with Jim Lehrer, “We are asking all the nations to join together to use political action, diplomatic action, economic action, legal action, law enforcement action, and if necessary, join with us as appropriate and if necessary in military action when we have identified the perpetrators and decided what military action might be appropriate. And so there is a lot that we can do. And the point I also want to make is that no country is safe from this kind of attack. It crosses every geographic boundary, social boundary, religious boundary, cultural boundary. And we must see it in those terms and respond in a unified way.”

We have many tools to use against these [common criminals]. Using only the military, we will never never succeed!

This country has survived times far more difficult than what we’ve suffered in the early years of this new century. Yes, terrorists have killed our citizens in a very dramatic and traumatic manner. However, this new crisis pales compared to the real wars this country has already fought and survived. If we are to survive this new century and its perils, we must realize that our current situation is very mild compared with other American historical events and that our fearfulness of this new crisis needs some perspective.

At the beginning of this country, we fought an 8 year revolutionary war against British rule. We lost 25,000 of our first citizens and another 25,000 were wounded for what we now enjoy.

About 100 years later, we fought the American Civil War that lasted four years. We lost 618,000 of our fellow citizens to try and live up to what our 18th century forefathers intended — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Just 64 years later, The Great Depression crashed our world and lasted 10 years. From 1929 to 1933, there was a 28 percent drop in the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It took another three years just to get back to the 1929 levels in 1937. At the low point in 1933, there was 25 percent unemployment, farm prices had fallen 60 percent, industrial production was down more than 50 percent, 2 million workers were out of work and most banks had closed.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt described the situation this way during his first inaugural address to the nation in March 1933:

… Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

Less than a decade later, The Greatest Generation was forced into World War II and had to take on two enemies with vastly greater resources than the terrorists (or drug lords) of today. During WWII, over 418,000 of our citizens were killed. This includes the more than 3,000 killed during the attack at Pearl Harbour.

Compare the losses of these three major wars in our history to our current losses due to acts of terrorism. The U.S. military and civilian deaths directly due to terrorist attacks were 7,776 as of this posting. These terrorist killings represent 31 percent of our losses during our Revolutionary War but only 1.9 percent of our WWII citizen losses.

Now compare the after effects of the attack on September 11, 2001, to losses of The Great Depression or the other financial sacrifices made during WWII. There is no comparison. Most of us have made absolutely no sacrifice as a direct result of the attack in September 2001.

There is also little similarity to the worldwide deaths due to terrorism with the worldwide deaths from WWII. This war cost the lives of over 72,599,600 citizens of the world. Excluding the poorly defined civilian casualties for Iraq, the total deaths for both the victims of terrorism and terrorists ranges from 109,000 to 146,000. Even if you add the minimum, 75,164, and maximum, 1,220,580, estimates for Iraqi civilians there is no comparison. Deaths due to terrorism only represents 1.9 percent of the losses from WWII.

So, the more one looks at the war on terrorism, the more it looks like the war on drugs — not worth all the media attention or the efforts by politicians to scare us into voting for them. Yes, the losses are tragic for all these conflicts, but this “war on terrorism” doesn’t deserve so much media and political weight in our nations’ efforts or in our personal decisions.

I will close with another excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural speech in 1933 when this country faced a truly significant threat to its future:

… This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

The primary tool the terrorists have working for them and against us, is our own fear of what we imagine they might do. I’ve tried to show here, and in other postings noted at the end of this posting, that our level of fear over another terrorist attack is exaggerated. This overrated fear paralyzes our minds and caused us to do stupid things like accept for truth a “Noble Lie,” give up our civil rights, relinquish our power to govern to one branch of the government and ignore the corruption and illegal activities of our elected leaders.

We need to regain all our noble advantages over the terrorists and their shallow human standards. We need to take back control of the government and elect those who will not use fear mongering to get our votes. We need to elect representatives that will respect our wishes while also honoring and protecting the laws of our Constitution. We need to be skeptical of what we read and hear that is based on an exaggerated fear of terrorism. We need to elect representatives that will help retake the moral high ground and regain the respect of other nations. We need to stop being fearful of such a small-minded enemy.

Fear mongering, along with “noble lies,” addressed elsewhere in this blog, are major components in the authoritarian’s tyrannical toolbox.

Ever since we were attacked in 2001, we have been manipulated with the fear card. Any time the Administration wants us to give up a right, manipulate Congress or redact our constitution, they leak or outright announce some imminent terrorist threat.

It’s all wrong!!!

Let me try ease your fears.

First of all, lets put some numbers to our losses caused by those most evil of the evil, the terrorists. Using numbers is cold and our losses are uncalled for, but it might help protect us from the fear mongers.

There are two numbers we can derive for our losses. One is for the attack in September of 2001. The other is for the loss of our children in Iraq.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the United States was close to 284,709,000 in September 2001. On a per capita basis, that attack cost us 1 out of every 95,765 citizens. This loss can also be stated as 104 out of every 10,000,000 citizens.

According to Nation Master, the per capita losses in Iraq since the war started is 83.994 out of every 10,000,000 citizens as of March 2006. Using U. S. Census Bureau population for July 2006, 299,398,484, and the total 2006 fatality count from iCasualties.org, 822 troops, the rate drops to 27.5 fatalities per 10,000,000 citizens. Now using the average fatalities for 2004, 2005 and 2006, 818 troops, against the mid 2005 population, 296,507,061, the rate is 27.6 fatalities per 10,000,000 citizens.

To put those numbers in perspective, here are statistics of other losses we suffer each year. They are from the FBI. These numbers are for both 2001 and 2006 and show the rate for every 10,000,000 citizens.

Since the World Trade Center fatalities were on a single day, the 2001 column is adjusted to a daily rate for the year. Those in the 2006 column are for the entire year.

I have merged the losses from terrorist activities into the table for comparison.

As you can see, we here at home are more likely to have our car stolen than be killed by a terrorist and that assumes we were attacked every day of the year for an average daily fatality rate of 104 for every 10,000,000 citizens.

Now look at the 2006 column again and realize what the last entry for our troops means. Since I’m using the population of the United States and not the population of Iraq nor total US troops in Iraq, they would, both numerically and intuitively, be safer fighting terrorists “here” rather than “there.”

Now imagine you were living in the 1850s in the middle of the old, unsettled, wild west. You are living in a small town inside a fort full of courageous cavalry. When are you and they safest? When all the troops are out searching for the bad guys over the horizon or when they are back at the fort with their loved ones?

In spite of the fear mongering, it’s time to stop cowering each time the fear card is played and bring the troops home so we can all be safer.

More fear mongering exposed …

Are you tired of being scared? Maybe a little perspective would help?

Do you fear dying from heart disease?  700,142  Americans were kill by it in 2001.

Do you fear dying from cancer?   553,768  Americans were kill by it in 2001.

Do you fear dying from an accident of any kind?  101,537  Americans were killed accidentally in 2001.

Do you fear dying from suicide?  30,622  Americans took their own lives in 2001.

Do you fear the loss of a infant?  27,801 infants died in 2001.

Do you fear dying from homicide?  17,330 Americans were murdered in 2001.

Do you fear dying from a work injury?  5,431  Americans were died at work in 2001.

Do you fear dying from drowning?  3,247  Americans drowned in 2001.

If we don’t fear most of these causes of death, then why should we fear dying at the hands of a terrorist. It is less likely than any of the above. On the other hand, if we are in a state of fear due to the constant drumbeat from the authoritarians in the Republican party, how reasoned are any decisions we might make?

Luke Mitchell wrote an article back in March 2004, the last time fear was used by the Republican authoritarians to short circuit our brains. Luke Mitchell began his article with this, “Terror, like ecstasy, tends to magnify perceptions. Just as affection becomes adoration in the physical act of love, so too does vigilance sometimes become morbid obsession in the face of spectacular violence. To be effective, this normal function of survival must also be temporary. It is now more than two years since our own national incident of spectacular violence, however, and although the United States remains obsessed, it is not unfair, or even insensitive, to begin considering the events of September 11 from a more detached perspective.” (Mitchell’s article provided the above statistics.)

In the “Legitimizing Authoritarian Conservatism: The Ugly Politics of Fear” section of his book Conservatives Without Conscience, John Dean concluded with, “In short, fear takes reasoning out of the decision-making process, which our history has shown us often enough can have dangerous and long-lasting consequences.  If Americans cannot engage in analytical thinking as a result of Republicans’ using fear for their own political purposes, we are all in serious trouble.  I am sure I am not alone in worrying about the road that we are now on, and where the current authoritarianism is taking the country.  I only wish other people would talk about it.”

Ted Galen Carpenter of the CATO Institute, put it this way, “Compared to the lethal menaces of the twentieth century, the strategic threat posed by radical Islamic terrorists is minor league. On September 11th, 2001, the terrorists killed some 3,000 people, and subsequent attacks in Bali, Madrid, Istanbul, London and Mumbai have killed hundreds more. Tragic as those deaths are, they pale in comparison to the nearly 100 million deaths of the two world wars.”

Our job, according to Bruce Schneier of Wired magazine,

is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. … Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show’s viewership.

The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn’t make us any safer.

Please keep the fear of terrorism in perspective and think about doing what is best for this country and keeping us from being scared into a single-party authoritarian state.