In perusing Democracy Arsenal, I came across this odd assertion:
But let us suppose I was a citizen. Would I enlist in the United States army? Let me be clear: Not bloody likely. For one thing, as Angryman rightly senses, I am chicken. There. I said it. (On reflection, my cowardice would be irrational; I suspect any given enlistee’s chances of dying in Iraq are not significantly greater than of being killed on the interstate).
Certainly the notion that enlistees in Iraq face no greater danger than on I-95 trivializes the risks the U.S. armed forces face currently, on a day-to-day basis. It would be a bold, counter-intuitive statement were it true, but as I put in the comments there, a back of the envelope calculation shows a serviceman and -woman is 8 times more likely to be killed while serving than a U.S. civilian is while driving.
Â
Has the pendulum swung too far the other way? Have we grown so aware of our irrational risk calculation in overvaluing some risks (plane crashes, terrorism, child abductions) and undercounting others (car wrecks, swimming pool drownings, kitchen accidents), that our “rational” selves assume a baseline level of risk for modernity, over which nothing - not even countering guerilla warfare - is really any more dangerous than anything else?
No comments have been added to this post yet.