Bruce Schneier points out a newly-published analysis on recent terrorism in the US, and provides his own comments (which I fully agree with).
From one of the final paragraphs:
The risk of dying in the U.S. from terrorism is substantially less than the risk of drowning in your bathtub, the risk of a home appliance killing you, or the risk of dying in an accident caused by a deer. Remember that more people die every month in automobile crashes than died in 9/11.
Although those stats are true, there’s something scarier about the idea of someone intentionally trying to kill you, as compared to the accidents mentioned above. If it’s an accident, then either nothing could have been done, or it’s your own fault for being careless. In cases of per-meditated murder (such as terrorism), there’s an intelligence out there plotting your demise, which can make people paranoid as to who that person is.
If an assassin is targeting you specifically, then yes, it’s something frightening and a certain amount of paranoia is justified. But if a terrorist is aiming to kill people, and doesn’t care who he kills, then whether you’re injured or not is essentially an accident — nothing you could have done about it, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, exactly as with any other true accident.
But HG, they hate our freedom! (Who the “they” is who hates our freedom is left ambiguous purposefully. 😉 )
Bush’s “they hate our freedom” may well be true, if you complete the sentence properly: they hate just how freely we f*ck with their governments and steal all their resources.