Politics and Risk
Some interesting fatality statistics. Most of these are from 2000, but I used 2001 statistics where I could find them. These are the number of deaths in the U.S. for various causes per year.
710,760 Heart Disease
553,091 Cancer
167,661 Stroke
65,313 Influenza (the flu)
42,196 Traffic accidents
29,350 Suicide (16,586 of which were by firearm)
16,765 Assault and homicide (10,801 of which were by firearm)
12,757 Accidental poisoning
3,059 Medical accidents
2,749 Sept. 11 Terrorist Attack
1,307 Fall down stairs
776 Accidental firearm discharge
681 Boating accidents
395 Electrocuted
341 Drowned in bathtub
80 Legally executed
31 Died in avalanche
26 Attacked by dog
The point of this is that the risk in 2001 of dying in a terrorist attack was somewhere between the risk of dying by falling down a staircase and the risk of dying on the operating table. The risk of dying in a car crash was about twenty times greater. Remember, this was the year of the most deadly terrorist attack ever. A ten-year average would put the risk of dying in a terrorist attack somewhere below that of drowning in your bathtub.
Human nature is such that we're very poor at estimating risks and probabilities. We tend to focus on the spectacular and novel risks, rather than the ordinary risks. That's what makes terrorism effective: a small number of deaths relative to the size of the population, concentrated in a single event and an unexpected manner can frighten the entire country.
That's also why we focus more on plane crashes than car crashes, even though the odds of dying in a commercial airliner accident are orders of magnitude smaller than the odds of dying in a car crash. Car crashes happen one or two at a time, whereas when a 747 goes down, it takes hundreds at once.
It also leads to misguided decisions about how to spend public money. Far more money has been spent to eliminate plane crashes than car crashes (which is part of the reason air travel is so safe); yet the money would probably have far more effect being spent on preventing traffic deaths.
The biggest immediate danger to the health and safety of my kids is that they won't have their seatbelts buckled properly, not that an extremist is going to crash a jetliner into our minivan. The best way I can help them live a long a healthy life is to teach them to eat right and exercise; living in a low-crime neighborhood and not owning a gun also help (I will, however, continue to give them baths regularly).
It is quite likely that the hundreds of billions spent in Afghanistan and Iraq have prevented terrorist deaths in the U.S. It may even be the case that there have been net fewer deaths (counting military and civilian casualties as a direct result of our war) as a result of the war on terrorism.
But, food for thought. How many deaths could have been prevented had we also spent $100 billion on preventing heart disease?