2008/12/10

Terrorists & context.

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I'm not easy to impress, and terrorists didn't impress me much either.
They're a rather marginal threat to us in my opinion - and statistics team up with me on this.

Maybe that's because I have such a great interest in military history.
2,900 dead - that sounds to me like the losses of a single infantry division in front of Moscow in the winter of 1941/42 to me.

It's all about context.
The German scale for national defense problems goes right up to

* destruction of our cities. 80, 90%. Not just a single quarter - all cities!
and even
* becoming a radiating wasteland after annihilation by enemy and 'friendly' nuclear weapons.

We Germans should and could look at the terrorist 'threat' quite relaxed.
In fact, we do. Somehow. There's still some excitement in the news media when something happens - but that's probably on the same order of magnitude as excitement about spoiled meat scandals and definitively less than about a soccer championship.

Now if I only could understand why our government sent troops to Afghanistan and why they weren't (all) recalled yet...

Sven Ortmann

5 comments:

  1. Hello Sven. Didn't know you had a blog. I''ve bookmarked it and will return often.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Send me an e-mail, please.
    Your old e-mail address of 2003 doesn't work any more (else you would have known about this blog since '07...).

    ReplyDelete
  3. I would love to send you and email but can't find it on your blog and no longer have yours as I've gone through about two computers since 2004. You can reach me at choveensantiago@yahoo.com

    ReplyDelete