9/11 ushered in America's 21st Century and brought violence from afar to match the violence we inflict on ourselves. We discovered new things to be afraid of and new words to describe them. Osama and the Taliban became part of our vocabulary; anthrax, dirty bombs and homeland security became household words; duct tape and bottled water became household needs.
Along the way government workers discovered a new career path, airport security. Congress acted with unusual clarity and rolled a dozen or so government agencies into one. It demonstrated what we could do when aroused, but the citizenry, confused and perplexed by the rainbow color-coded warning system, clamored for more.
Others clamored for less. For them, the prisoner-of-war diets in Guantanamo Bay, or the presumed racial profiling of young Arab men at airport security check-points were more important than the safety of American citizens. That is the strength of a democratic society; the ability to disagree without killing each other.
On 9/11/2001 3,074 people perished from terrorist acts in the United States, all but three of them in New York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, PA. On that same day the Center for Disease Control reported that 6,623 Americans perished from other causes:1
Non-Terrorist Related Deaths on 9/11/2001
Accidents 267
Murders 54
Suicides 81
Heart Disease 1,917
Other health related causes 3,186
Other Causes 1,118
Total 6,623
On 9/11/2001 the United States of America had a population of approximately 286 million people, 221 million automobiles, 192 million firearms, and 55 million dogs with teeth; and yet only 402 people died that day from accidental causes not related to the terrorist events. In fact we murder ourselves at a higher rate than we kill our neighbors (81 vs. 54).
On that same day 5,100 people died from health related causes; more than felled by the terrorists, and twelve (12) times the number who died from gunshot wounds, automobile accidents, dog bites and other unnatural causes. 1,900 died from heart disease alone. And the next day, 1,900 more...who noticed?
What should we conclude from those statistics? I leave that to the experts, but one thing seems obvious; we, not suicide bombers, are the most deadly threat to ourselves. According to the CDC report, fatal heart disease led the death pack in 2001. Smoking, eating, drinking and lack of exercise are the leading perpetrators of heart disease, the leading cause of natural death, and all deaths that year.
Violence wears different hats. It may arrive in the mail in the form of white powder, or it may be concealed in the shoe of a fundamentalist bomber, but the double cheeseburger or the pack-a-day habit that robs a child of her father is no less a terrorist event for her.
We can't train enough doctors and nurses, build enough hospitals, or invent enough drugs to change that.
There has not been a single terrorist-caused death on American soil in two years, but we have held 1,387,000 heart related funerals since 9/11/2001. Today, there will be 1,900 more. How many must die before we wake up?
