William R. Polk on American Grand Strategy for Iraq, Syria, and the Region - James Fallows - The Atlantic

William R. Polk on American Grand Strategy for Iraq, Syria, and the Region - James Fallows - The Atlantic: We don't want to live in fear, and we believe that the danger is foreign. The irony, as one of the authors of our Constitution already put it over 200 years ago, is that our principal danger is ourselves. Of course, he could not have guessed the extent: we murdered almost 200,000 of our fellow citizens in the first decade of this century. (That was with guns and knives; we killed about twice that many in the same period with our most dangerous weapon, the automobile.) The number of Americans killed by foreign terrorists in America was less than 3,000. The odds of an American being killed by a terrorist were said to be about 1:20,000,000. But, the number of Americans killed in foreign wars (not counting Vietnam) is approaching 10,000 and the number with long-term disabilities caused by wounds several times as high as the total of all these figures (including Vietnam).