Letter: Scare tactics popular again
I published this letter in the Enterprise-Record on August 2. This is the letter that got the blog started.
Seems the United States is facing a new threat from al-Qaida, according to a National Intelligence Estimate titled "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland." The problem here is that the notion sounds just a bit familiar.
When I was going to Kimball School in the late 1950s, I remember participating in duck-and-cover drills, which my teacher said would protect us — from a horde of bombers poised just beyond the horizon in a place called the Soviet Union. These bombers were going to drop nuclear fire down on my first-grade class.
While the events of 9/11 were real, so was the Cold War, and before that the war we fought alongside the Soviets. Yet their bombers were going to drop nuclear bombs on Kimball School the same way that al-Qaida is going to let loose some sort of destruction up here in Paradise.
What this sounds like is that al-Qaida is today's communism, and just as much of a threat. The odds are greater that I will put down a dollar and win the lottery. I like those odds.
Gary D. Brune