Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday that Americans should expect more attacks by terrorists [...] Justice, Cheney added, "will be delivered methodically, unsparingly and in full." However, he predicted, "we have to assume there will be more attacks. ... And, for the first time in our history, we will probably suffer more casualties here at home in America than will our troops overseas."
You know, when I first read the headline on that article, I thought, "So he's saying there will be more attacks. We already knew THAT." But I have to admit, that last sentence above ... I'd never actually thought of it that way before. That if terrorist activity becomes that sort of constant background noise that Israel lives with, more civilians will be killed than soldiers. (Actually, assuming that things go more or less they way they have, we've already suffered more civilian casualties than we'll have among soldiers during this whole thing. We lost more civilians in one attack than we have soldiers since Vietnam.)
Granted that the administration wants people to resume something like normal activity ... that's just one of those deer-in-the-headlight moments, isn't it? Can't you just imagine all those people, paying $800 a plate, suddenly being frozen into shock because they'd never thought about it that way before?
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!