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Example research essay topic: Air Traffic Control War On Terrorism - 2,221 words

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... letters lacking return addresses; urgent mall was embargoed; and for weeks the national dialog centered on one of the least hazards we face. An NPR radio host asked the Postmaster General if the whole U. S. Postal System might be shut down, despite expert opinion that -- in a world faced with diabetes, salmonella poisoning, and AIDS -- anthrax will remain (even as a biological weapon) a bit player as a cause of death. Its sole potency is in the context of terrorism: if, by mulling lethal powder to someone, the news media choose to broadcast hysteria into every home so that the very future of our postal system is questioned, then the terrorist has deployed a powerful weapon indeed.

But his power would be negated if we were to react to the anthrax in proportion to its modes t potential for harm. Research on risk perception has shown that our reactions to hazards don't match the numerical odds. We fear events (like airliner crashes) that kill many at once much more than those that kill one at a time (car accidents). We fear being harmed unknowingly (by carcinogens) far more than by things we feel we control ourselves (driving or smoking). We fear unfamiliar technologies (nuclear power) and terrorism far more than prosaic hazards (household falls). Such disproportionate attitudes shape our actions as public citizens.

Accordingly governments spend vastly more per life saved to mitigate highly feared hazards (e. g. , on aircraft safety) than on "everyday" risks (e. g. , food poisoning). Risk analysts commonly accept, with neutral objectivity, the disparity between lay perceptions and expert risk statistics.

Sometimes it is justifiable to go beyond raw statistics. Depending on our values, we might be more concerned about unfair deaths beyond an individual's control than self-inflicted harm. We might worry mo re about deaths of children than of elderly people with limited life expectancies. We might dread lingering, painful deaths more than sudden ones.

We might be more troubled about "needless" deaths, with no compensating offsets, than about fatalities in the name of a larger good (e. g. , of soldiers or police). Or, in all these cases, we might not. Why should terrorism command our exceptional attention? That the 9 / 11 terrorists maliciously attacked the symbolic and actual seats of our economic and military power (WTC/Wall Street and the Pentagon) should concern us if we truly think that future attacks might destroy our society.

But who believes that? Government responses seem directed mostly at stopping future similar attacks... which returns us full circle to the question: why should that have become our primary national goal, at the sacrifice of tens of billions of dollars, of some of our civil liberties, of our travelling convenience, and of many of our pre- 9 / 11 priorities? Instead of rationally apportioning funds to the worst or most unfair societal predicaments, homeland security budgets soar. Nearly every airport administrator, city emergency management director, mayor, legislator, school district supervisor, tourist attraction manager, and plant operations foreman felt compelled after 9 / 11 to "cover their asses" by visibly enhancing their facility's security. Superfluous barricades were erected, search equipment purchased, and guards hired.

Postage rates and delivery delays increase as envelopes are searched for anthrax. Even the governor of West Virginia announced a "West Virginia Watch" program; while some vigilance in that state does no harm, it is unlikely that Wheeling is high on Osama bin Laden's target list. Meanwhile, programs unrelated to "homeland security" suffer. Finite medical resources were diverted to comforting people that their flu symptoms weren't anthrax... or testing to see if they were. Charitable funds that would have nurtured the homeless flowed, instead, to wealthy families of deceased Wall Street traders.

Funds for education and pollution control go instead to "securing" public buildings and events. Billions of extra tax dollars are spent on military operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan rather than on enhancing American productivity. If we truly believe in "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and that each life is precious, we must resist selfish forces that would take advantage of our fears and squander our energies and fiscal resources on overblown security enhancements. Many say that spending for extra security can do no harm. But there is harm when politicians act on views, like those of a New Yorker who earlier this year disparaged complaints about airport queues, saying, "I hope that they will be inconvenienced, and will always be inconvenienced, because we should never forget the 5, 000 [sic] who died. "Inconvenience" sounds innocuous, but it means lost time, lost money, lost productivity, as well as increased frustration and cynicism. Disproportionate expenditures on marginal security efforts take attention, time, and resources away from other more productive enterprises.

Moreover, our civil liberties are eroded by the involuntary nature of our "sacrifices. " When a person irrationally fears crowded elevators and takes the stairs instead, only that person suffers the inconvenience of their personal response. But when everyone, fearful or not, is forced to suffer because of the fears of others, then such measures become tyrannical: we should expect rational deliberation and justifications by our leaders before accepting them. But in the aftermath of 9 / 11, tens of billions of dollars were immediately reallocated with little public debate. Skeptics might well question our society's acquiescence to popular hysteria and proactively challenge our leaders to balance the expenditures of our resources. Consider some misperceptions of risk. Many news headlines just before 9 / 11 concerned shark attacks and the disappearance of Chandra Levy, an extreme distortion of serious societal issues (only ten people annually are killed by sharks worldwide).

We can laugh at, or bemoan, the triviality of the media. But such stories reflect our own illogical concerns. If, in allocating funds among different hazards, we deliberately choose to value the lives of Manhattan skyscraper office workers, postal employees, or airline frequent flyers more than we value the lives of agricultural workers or miners, it is a conscious, informed choice. But it is rarely objectivity that informs such choices. In order to help laypeople and leaders to put our options into perspective, skeptics, teachers, and journalists alike have a responsibility to put the objective past and potential threats from terrorism into contexts that ordinary people can relate to.

Let's compare 9 / 11 with other past and potential causes of mass death. Note that we generally can't compare prevention costs with lives saved; at best, we can compare expenditures with lives not saved. For example, we can compare the cost of air traffic control with midair collision fatalities, but we can only guess at the toll without any such air traffic control. We " ve noted that 9 / 11 deaths are similar to monthly U. S. traffic fatalities.

Whatever total private / public funds are spent annually, per life saved, on improved highway and motor vehicle safety, alcohol-while-driving prevention efforts, etc. , it hardly approaches homeland security budgets. The 9 / 11 fatalities were several to ten times fewer than annual deaths from falls (in the home or workplace), or from suicide, or from homicide. One can question the effectiveness of specific safety programs, counseling efforts, or laws; but, clearly, comparatively paltry sums are spent on programs that would further reduce falls, suicides, and murders. In autumn 2001, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) predicted that 20, 000 Americans would die from complications of influenza during the then-upcoming winter, most of which could be prevented if susceptible people were vaccinated. The CDC advisory was typically buried inside newspapers whose banner headlines dealt with the anthrax attacks, which killed just a few people. Twice as many people died in the worst U.

S. flood (stemming from the 1900 Galveston hurricane) as at the WTC. Floods and earthquakes are major killers abroad (each of ten disasters killed over 10, 000 people, and a few over 100, 000, during the last three decades, chiefly in Asia) but are minor killers in modern America. Hurricane Andrew did great physical damage even though fatalities were few. What are sensible expenditures for research in meteorology and seismology, for mandatory enhancement of building codes and redevelopment, and for other measures that would mitigate natural disasters? The 9 / 11 fatalities are just 1. 5 percent of those in the nation's worst epidemic (half a million died from flu in 1918), and also just 1. 5 percent of the annual U.

S. cancer fatalities. We have waged a "war" on cancer, at the expense of research on other less feared but deadly diseases; this war's success is equivocal (five-year survivability after detection is up, but so are cancer death rates -- though mainly due to decades-old changes in smoking habits). Where should "homeland security" expenditures rank against medical expenditures? Impacts by kilometer-sized asteroids are extremely rare, but one could send civilization into a new Dark Ages.

The annualized American fatality rate is about 5 percent of the WTC fatalities, although such a cosmic impact has only 1 / 100 th of 1 percent chance of happening during the twenty-first century. Just a couple million dollars are now spent annually to search for threatening asteroids. Should we spend many billions to build a planetary defense shield, which would statistically be in proportion to what we now spend on homeland security and the war on terrorism? Might the threat to our civilization's very existence raise the stakes above even the terrorist threat? To us, these comparisons suggest that the nation's post- 9 / 11 expenditures have been lopsidedly large, and that a balanced approach would "give back" some funds to reduce deaths from falls, suicide, murder, highway accidents, natural disasters (including even asteroid impacts), malnutrition, and preventable or curable diseases... and give back our civil liberties, and just the plain pleasures of life, such as the arts and humanities, exploration, and national parks.

And if truly effective means to end wars could be found, they would be especially worthy of funds, given the death toll from twentieth century wars. Before homeland security becomes dominated by vested bureaucracies and constituencies, there may yet be time to question its dominant role in our priorities. We advocate shifting toward objective cost-benefit analyses and equitable evaluation of the relative costs of saving human lives. Of course, subjective judgements have some validity beyond strict adherence to numerical odds. But we need a national dialog to address these issues dispassionately so that future governmental decisions can eschew immediate, impulsive reactions. Individual skeptics, in our own lives, can exemplify sensible choices.

Among the many dumb things we should avoid (e. g. , smoking, driving without a seatbelt, or letting kids play with firearms), we must also avoid driving instead of flying, acquiescing uncomplainingly to ineffective searches at local buildings and events, and generally yielding to the new "homeland security" mania. Clear thinking about risks, rather than saying that "any improvement in security is worth it, " can reduce our societal vulnerability to terrorism. One constructive antidote to post- 9 / 11 trauma is to enhance the information available and to foster sound appreciation, evaluation, and use of the information. Life is inherently risky, unpredictable, and subject to things we cannot know...

but there are things we do know and can understand. Rather than scaring people about sharks, serial killers, and anthrax, the mass media could help people understand the real risks in their everyday environments and activities. Educational institutions should help students develop critical skills necessary to make rational choices. 'While avoiding intrusions into personal liberties, government could nevertheless collect and assess statistical data in those arenas (like air travel) where potential dangers lurk, concentrating protective efforts and law enforcement where it is most efficacious. To conclude, we suggest that most homeland security expenditures, which in the zero-sum budget game are diverted from other vital purposes, are terribly expensive and disproportionate to competing needs for preventing other causes of death and misery in our society. While prudent, focused improvements in security are called for, the sheer costs of most security initiatives greatly distort the way we address the many threats to our individual and collective well-being. Our greatest vulnerability to terrorism is the persisting, irrational fear of terrorism that has gripped our country.

We must start behaving like the informed, reasoning beings we profess to be. World Count: 4179 Bibliography: Alexander, Dean C. and Yonah Alexander. Terrorism And Business: The Impact Of September 11, 2001. Transnational Publishers Inc. , 2002. After 9 / 11: Preventing Mass Destruction Terrorism And Weapons Proliferation.

Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2002, 80 pp. Available at: web Beamer, Lisa and Ken Abraham. Lets Roll: Finding Hope In The Midst Of Crisis. Tyndale House Publishers, 2002. Bennett, William J. Why We Fight: Moral Clarity And The War On Terrorism.

Doubleday, 2002. Bremer, L. Defending The American Homeland: A Report of the Heritage Foundation Homeland Security Task Force. Heritage Foundation, 2002. Campbell, Kurt M. and Michele A.

Flournoy. To Prevail: An American Strategy For The War Against Terrorism. Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2001. Simon, Jeffrey D.

The Terrorist Trap: Americas Experience With Terrorism. Indiana University Press, 2001. Talbott, Strobe. The Age of Terror: America and the World after September 11. Basic Books, 2002. Hermann, Philip B.

Terrorism and America: A Commonsense Strategy for a Democratic Society. MIT Press, 2000.


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Research essay sample on Air Traffic Control War On Terrorism

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