Are there more american hating terrorists in the world today than yesterday? If you ask a Bush Republican ( I have ) they will tell you." No, we've killed a lot of them already." But if you ask anyone else they will say "I'm concerned. Very concerned."
Democrats haved failed to effectively wield this concern against the cons and the republican media machine. Having a way to quantify 'threat level' objectively would take the legs out of the 'we are safer today' fantasy and also supply a simple heuristic for candidates come November - one that features diplomacy and hard, indisputable (even for cons) facts.
Furthermore, it makes a mockery of the imaginary, politically driven threat level used by cons as a 'fear stick' - which, as you know, will likely show up hear again come elections.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
A real terror equation
A basic heuristic helps quantify the likelihood of terror(T).
(t) Time - how far out are we computing.
(n) The current number of terrorists.
(w) The effect war has on the number of terrorist(n).
(d) The effect of diplomacy (education/empathy) on the number of terrorists(n).
Crudely, something like this :
T = t + n / w + d
Our weapons against terror are war and diplomacy and we have an upward battle against time. We can only change the number of terrorists and even then the figure can, of course, not actually be known.
Our mission is to find the right mix of war(including tactical missions) and diplomacy. Right now, war is very high and growing. In fact, popular believe is that war has had to opposite effect on the number of terrorists. So, war would be negative - or less than 1 - bringing credence to the saying, "Fighting for peace is like screwing for chastity.".
The cold statistics of a RAND Corp. database show the impact of the explosion of violence in Iraq: The 5,362 deaths from terrorism worldwide between March 2004 and March 2005 were almost double the total for the same 12-month period before the 2003 U.S. invasion.
As a measure of diplomacy, use respectable world polls, like Gallup to best represent world's perception of America.
Conclusion
1) More diplomacy and less war equals fewer terrorist
2) Fewer terrorists equates to better chances of survival for America as we know it
3) More war equals more money for the war machine equals more terror equals 'the end times' equals the end equals a self-fulfilling prophesy equals stupid.
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