Very helpful article. Goes to the core of comparative risk analysis, and the problem of overblown self serving rhetoric.
The war on terror misfired. Blame it all on the neocons
The legitimate grievances of Muslims were never listened to by the west
David Clark
Wednesday April 7, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4896760-103550,00.html
It was never going to be easy to keep a sense of perspective in the face of a terrorist campaign as violent as the one being waged by al-Qaida; some have found it harder than others. The claim by James Woolsey, the former CIA director, that we are in the process of fighting "world war three" stands out as a particularly silly example of the hyperbolic overdrive that has characterised much of the debate over the past two-and-a-half years. So does Tony Blair's assertion that the terrorist threat is "existential" in its scope.
Islamist terrorism poses a threat to the physical existence of those who stand to be killed as a result of its actions, as yesterday's news of a plot to explode a chemical bomb in Britain reminded us. But it is not comparable to the threat posed to western democracy and European Jewry by Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s, let alone the prospect of nuclear annihilation during the cold war. Policy choices that proceed from that assumption are almost certain to be wrong.
