Monday, May 03, 2010

Conor Friedersdorf makes a funny.

Conor's pretty good when he takes on the wingnuts, and here, he skewers Bill Burck and Dana Perino -- who think NYC is the most dangerous city evah.

It is certainly true that New York City is a terrorist target, but what can these National Review writers be thinking when they assert that it is the number one terrorist target in the world? In the last decade, there has been one successful NYC terrorist attack, the horrific September 11, 2001 massacre. Here are estimates of suicide bombings in Iraq during this decade: 25 suicide bombings in 2003, 140 suicide bombings in 2004, 478 suicide bombings in 2005, 297 suicide bombings in 2006, 442 suicide bombings in 2007, 257 suicide bombings in 2008, and 76 suicide bombings in 2009.

I am guessing that Mr. Burck and Ms. Perino feel safer from terrorists in Manhattan than they would if they were instead forced to walk the streets of Baghdad, or Israel for that matter, so it’s hard for me to believe that even they take their assertion seriously if they’ve thought about it for more than a moment, but I’ve grown used to absurd assertions like this whenever the subject of terrorism is broached.
Heh.
Later in the same post, the duo writes, “For all of its flaws, our justice system and Constitution remain the envy of the world — at least the part of the world that believes in freedom and individual rights.” Again, this is the kind of thing that you expect to see at The Corner, but that makes no sense if you stop to think about it for more than a second. Is Denmark a part of the world where people believe in freedom and individual rights? And how many Danes envy the American justice system? How many Germans, Australians, and Spaniards would say, if interviewed, “Why yes, I am very jealous of the way that the United States handles its criminal defendants, especially the ones accused in the War on Terrorism”?
Indeed.

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