ISIS has got its hands on radioactive material. Authorities reassure us that we should only be “minimally concerned”. I expect that the President’s political foes will inflate the theft to an existential crisis for the US. And the punditocracy will ignore the facts to promote their pet point of view.
Should we be concerned about ISIS’s new possessions? In short – no.
I do not base that answer on any knowledge of exactly what ISIS has, or what scientists they have in their ranks, or what their capabilities are. I base that answer on the history of hyperbolic threats full sound and fury resulting in nothing.
Not only do Cassandras issue threats with no substance, but more tragically they ignore threats for which there is evidence. Experience suggests that we may safely ignore all that we are warned of, and worry about that which no one talks about. Look no further than the empty warnings of Saddam’s WMDs (“…we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”) and the total surprise of 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing.
And remember how we had to defend South Vietnam, lest a unified communist Vietnam presaged a Red tide sweeping over Southeast Asia. Even the end of the cold war revealed the old Soviet Union to be a paper tiger.
American politics lurches from bogeyman to bogeyman; the list of threats seemingly endless. Everything is a crisis. We are teetering on the brink – an inch from extinction.
And yet we are still here.
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