Was 9/11 really that bad? - Los Angeles Times Has the American reaction to the attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time simply wrong? If we did overreact, why did we do so? Does history provide any insight?

So it took about 5 and a half years (to my knowledge) before an major US western newspaper got around to publishing the very obvious. By historical and even current global standards 9/11 was not a particularly significant disaster. In fact, when BBC World devoted a full day to 9/11 in 2002 and only a few specials to Srebrenica in 2005, it was hard not to wonder if one American life is worth two Balkan ones in our attention. Rwanda, Darfour - none of them elicit the 'we live a post-...' era phrase which is used to elicit the taboo of 9/11 discussion. Or at least, so a more engaged person might conclude. A symbolic anthropologist would not! It is obvious that to one ingroup the lives of its members are infinitely more interesting and valuable than those of others. Furthermore, the symbolic value of something will outweigh any fact-based value any time (numbers of dead, financial cost, years needed for recovery, etc.).

And then there is the discourse-logistical element. Once a topos (such as 9/11 was an inhumane atrocity) is established it is not that easy to dislodge - just like any change in the symbolic/linguistic repertoir. It would be like speaking without verbs. The author himself interweaves his text with the appropriate topoic warding off ‘bad textual spirits’.

Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies' objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.

Eventhough, it leads the author to an interesting conclusion that allows the profiling of certain information inspite of ritual limitations of discourse, this is most likely still incorrect. I'm not aware of any sustained effort by the Islamist radicals at "destroying America" - they may be fanatical but they are, by and large, not stupid. Their objective is to balance the symbolic scales by causing damage where it symbolically hurts the most. If they could kill a few hundred thousand Westerners somewhere in one go, they would probably take the opportunity but they never imagine that they can destroy the West. There may be a few ritual phrases out there like 'Death to America' but no sustained plan or even vision that would justify calling it an "objective". Unlike the democratizing zeal of the neo-liberals Islamist radicalism is not a particularly proselytizing movement (they recruit from their own middle classes [see my other post today] but do not convert from too far afield).

But it is no disrespect to the victims of 9/11, or to the men and women of our armed forces, to say that, by the standards of past wars, the war against terrorism has so far inflicted a very small human cost on the United States. As an instance of mass murder, the attacks were unspeakable, but they still pale in comparison with any number of military assaults on civilian targets of the recent past, from Hiroshima on down.

Even if one counts our dead in Iraq and Afghanistan as casualties of the war against terrorism, which brings us to about 6,500, we should remember that roughly the same number of Americans die every two months in automobile accidents.

The use of analogy in these two paragraphs (as well as the one in the introductory paragraph bringing to the fore Soviet casualties in WWII) is very typical in most frame-negotiating contexts at this level. Nevertheless the code switching from topoi/taboo broaching to analogy is a very interesting example of the dances of persuasion and assuasion we engage in in the written word. This is an important preface to what follows - a well-reasoned discussion of the origins of the concept of peace in Enlightenment (which itself spawned quite a bit of mayhem) and a critical engagement with John Mueller's Overblown only to end with the following analogical denouement to his interesting rhetorical adventure.

Yet as the comparison with the Soviet experience should remind us, the war against terrorism has not yet been much of a war at all, let alone a war to end all wars. It is a messy, difficult, long-term struggle against exceptionally dangerous criminals who actually like nothing better than being put on the same level of historical importance as Hitler — can you imagine a better recruiting tool? To fight them effectively, we need coolness, resolve and stamina. But we also need to overcome long habit and remind ourselves that not every enemy is in fact a threat to our existence.