Let us take a moment to consider the true threat that terrorists burning effigies of Bush halfway around the world represent to our country.

Within the Western world, we will assume that terrorism poses the greatest threat to Israel. Israelis must surely face an enormous threat of being blown up by suicide bombers, don’t they?

Wrong. Israelis are almost twice as likely to die in a car accident than from a terrorist attack. For every 100,000 people in Israel, 6.9 people die every year in car accidents. Only 1-6 will die from terrorism. In fact, the 10 year average between 1993 and 2003 was only 1.8.

That means that you are more likely to be murdered by a Swiss in Swizterland (2 murders per year per 100,000 people). Americans are twice as likely to be murdered by a fellow citizen (4 murders per 100,000 people) than an from a terrorist while living in Israel — and our murder rate is trending at 40 year lows.

About the only place where terrorism represents a threat to Americans is in Iraq, whereour presence hands around 300 troops over to terrorists to torture and kill every year.

We should give our troops the best Christmas present they could ever hope for: the chance to come home and live a long, happy life with their families. Let us bring our troops home.

• Murder rate in Switzerland: 2
• Murder rate in the US: 5.
• Terrorism death rate in Israel: ~1-6 (decade average: 1.8).
• Vehicle death rate in Israel: 6.9
• Vehicle death rate in US: 14
• Terrorism death rate in the US: ~0 (1 on some years like 2001)
• Death rate for US troops in Iraq: 324

This is the very reason making us feel safe cannot be the goal of the president or our government:

Dismissing attacks from the “Northeast press,” Mr. Wynn pointed to Mr. Giuliani’s strong poll numbers in South Carolina and said that the bad week was mostly a result of an absence of the issue of terror.
“That is the key question that galvanizes a whole lot of support,” he said. “When that nerve is hit, people do not worry about divorces; they do not worry about perfection. People worry about the survival of the country.” Other supporters argued that the news would have little effect on voters who supported Mr. Giuliani because they felt he would keep American safe from terrorism.
“Everybody understands it’s election-year politics,” said Barron Thomas, a key fund-raiser for Mr. Giuliani in Arizona. “But people are focused on the big issues, that’s Iran and Iraq. If we start examining microscopic details that are really insignificant, it is really going to derail the big picture.”

In other words, Giuliani needs to create terrorism in order to get support for making us feel like he can defeat it. In other words, if he ever does defeat terrorism, he will lose our support. So it is in his interest to keep it around but contained. We complain about how drug companies just want us to spend our lives medicated because this is more profitable than curing us. This is the same problem here.

While I understand that what Michael Vick did to his dogs was reprehensible, I see zero justification for the following:

federal prosecutors asked a judge to set aside $1 million to care for the pit bulls left behind when Vick was busted

That is a ridiculous sum by any standard. How much does dog food cost, exactly?

I am all for Vick getting the punishment he deserves following his conviction. This does not mean that we need to throw a bunch of money at whoever the lucky caretakers for these animals happens to be — most likely whoever has the closest connections to the prosecutors or some other political power deciding how that $1m gets used.

All this does is encourage animal rights activists to sue their pet-owning neighbors in hopes that they can land a big settlement.