And yet another example: Flame retardants are one variety of chemical that routinely turns up in blood tests and environmentalists want many banned on the grounds that they are suspected of increasing the risk of cancer, hyperactivity disorder in children, and other ills. But how did flame retardants get into our bodies in the first place? As the name suggests, flame retardants are chemicals added to consumer items like children’s pajamas and furniture which make them resistant to fire. Some are actually required by law, and for good reason. In 1988, Britain passed a regulation requiring flame retardants in all new furniture. A University of Surrey study commissioned by the government (Effectiveness of the Furniture and Furnishings Fire Safety Regulations 1988) estimated that in nine years the regulation saved as many as 1,800 lives and prevented 5,700 injuries. So does the precautionary principle say the use of these chemicals should be banned or made mandatory?
240: “. . . there would be little left to eat.” The 1996 report was the product of a three-year, peer-reviewed investigation of carcinogens in food. “First, the committee concluded that based upon existing exposure data, the great majority of individual naturally occurring and synthetic chemicals in the diet appears to be present at levels below which any significant adverse biologic effect is likely, and so low that they are unlikely to pose any appreciable cancer risk,” the report states. “Second, the committee concluded that natural components of the diet may prove to be of greater concern than synthetic components with respect to cancer risk, although additional evidence is required before definitive conclusions may be drawn.”
CHAPTER II
249: “. . . the 1 in 87,976 annual risk of drowning.” Accident statistics come from the National Safety Council’s Injury Facts, 2007.
252: “. . . attack is probably impossible now.” It was even highly unlikely to succeed at the time. The plot was big and complex and, as with any plot of that nature, there were many points at which a failure would collapse the whole thing—which is precisely what happened to an equally ambitious Philippines-based plot broken up several years before 9/11 and a London-based scheme smashed in 2006. And the 9/11 plot did experience failures, although the terrorists were repeatedly saved by bad official judgment and dumb luck. For a summary, see Max Bazerman and Michael Watkins, Predictable Surprises.
252: “. . . they could inflict the sort of devastation it took armies to accomplish in the past.” A critical caveat about “weapons of mass destruction” is often overlooked. In the Cold War, the term was mainly a synonym for nuclear weapons and was gradually expanded to include other unconventional weapons governed by special international agreements— meaning chemical and biological weapons. So it’s essentially a legal artifact, which helps explain why many “weapons of mass destruction” are not massively destructive and many weapons that don’t qualify as WMDs are. Timothy McVeigh tore an office building in half with a bomb made of fertilizer (which does not qualify as a weapon of mass destruction) while the victims of mustard gas (which is a weapon of mass destruction) typically suffer only agonizing blisters. As for the much-hyped “dirty bomb”—a conventional explosive that also spreads radioactive material—it is usually classed as a WMD because of the radioactive material, but according to the CDC, the levels of radioactivity released by a dirty bomb are unlikely to be high enough to cause severe sickness, let alone death—and so it is the old-fashioned explosive that is the most dangerous part of the device.
261: “. . . referred to terrorism as ‘an existential threat to the whole of the human family.’” Most hyperbole about the threat of terrorism puts it on par with the danger posed by the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. But occasionally, it takes sole possession of the number-one spot, as in former governor of Arkansas and Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee’s description of “Islamofascism” as “the greatest threat this country’s ever faced.”
265: “. . . Cheney was invoking the precautionary principle.” For a fuller discussion, see Jessica Stern and Jonathan Wiener, “Precaution Against Terrorism, ” a paper issued by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
266: “. . . will ‘set off a bomb that contains nuclear or biological material.’ ” The portrayal of WMDs as doomsday weapons, and the obsessive focus on them that follows, can lead even the most sophisticated thinkers to some truly bad conclusions. In November 2007, the esteemed professor of Near Eastern studies Bernard Lewis cast the fight against terrorism as the third great fight against totalitarianism, after the struggles against Naziism and Communism. But there is an important difference, Lewis wrote. The Nazis “had no weapons of mass destruction. The Soviets had them, but were deterred from using them by what came to be known as ‘mutually assured destruction.’ Our present adversaries either have or will soon have weapons of mass destruction, but for them, with their apocalyptic mind-set, mutual assured destruction would not be a deterrent; it would be an inducement. ” Thus, according to Lewis, neither a genocidal maniac who came within a hair of conquering Europe and dominating the planet nor a superpower capable of snuffing out civilization on 15 minutes notice were as dangerous as scattered bands of fanatics who may, someday, get their hands on a WMD or two.
267: “. . . of death or 9/11 increased support for the president.” See Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski, Fatal Attraction, Psychological Science 17:10.
268: “. . . war on terrorism is ‘the defining conflict of our time,’ Giuliani proclaimed. ” Giuliani’s obsessive focus on 9/11 never wavered as the months went by, prompting Democratic Senator Joe Biden to joke that every sentence uttered by the former mayor of New York contains three things: “A noun, a verb and 9/11.”
272: “. . . worldwide economic depression and martial law in America.” Clarke’s disaster scenario is a little more detailed and extravagant than most but otherwise it’s typical of the genre. In Whose War Is It? (HarperCollins Canada, Scarborough, Ontario, 2007), Canadian historian and security pundit Jack Granatstein opens with a graphic description of an earthquake devastating Vancouver on the morning of February 12, 2008. Seizing the moment, Islamist terrorists detonate a bomb in Montreal and release anthrax in Toronto. “It did not take long before mobs were roughing up anyone who appeared to be of Middle East origin, and women in burkas were punched and kicked.” The Canadian military, its meager resources committed wholly in Afghanistan, is incapable of intervening. Chaos looms. Appalled American politicians close the border. The Toronto Stock Exchange plunges. The economy reels. If it’s not already apparent, the central argument of Whose War Is It? is that the Canadian military and security services desperately need more funding—and if they don’t get it, well, just imagine what could happen.