That's the question posed by this oped in the LA Times.
Professor of history David A Bell, starts his provocative piece by saying
IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.
It also raises several questions. 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?
Let me start by saying that WWII was started by a smaller attack. On December 7, 1941, America lost 2,403 lives, nearly all military personnel. On 9/11 we lost 2,997 mostly civilian lives. That's a twenty percent increase in initial events that led to the war in question compared to the historical reference given by Mr Bell. So given Bell's logic, the response to 9/11 should be 20% greater than the response to Pearl Harbor.
Mr Bell also ignores the fact that there have been 7,304 deadly attacks carried out by the muhajideen since 9/11. In WWII we didn't wait for the Nazi's to drive their tanks over the White House before we attacked Germany. We took the fight to the enemy and destroyed them before it was too late.
As far as historical insight, who has been proved right by history, Winston Churchill of Neville Chamberlin? And which side of that great argument does Mr Bell resemble? Yes, the death toll of 9/11 is microscopic as compared to the 50 million lost in WWII, but 9/11 occurred on the first day of the war, and Bell is comparing that number to the totals added up at the very end of WWII.
Bell makes the point that the Muslim terrorists lack the military hardware to do the same kind of damage as the Axis powers, but if a jihadist gets a hold of a nuclear weapon, all bets are off.
Ahmadinejad may already have them and could bring the death toll up into the millions overnight. An al-Qaeda operative could bring several suitcase nukes into the US, killing an untold amount of civilians and making entire cities uninhabitable of years.
No, Mr Bell we haven't overreacted, we're just looking out for our own. Because we love our country and it's people.
