David McElroy

One of the first things you learn in politics is to never repeat the charges that your opponent makes about you. It’s counter-intuitive for most people, but after you’ve been in the business for awhile, you learn that if you defend yourself by explaining what your opponents are saying — and why they’re wrong — you end up reinforcing what the opponents are saying, even if they’re wrong.

Because of that, I’m shocked to see Barack Obama’s re-election campaign falling into one of the worst traps I’ve ever seen. The campaign has set up a website that it calls “AttackWatch.com.”

If you set up a site that talks about the lies your enemy is telling about you, all you’re doing is giving them — and their lies — publicity. I know it appeals to the rational side of the brain to respond, but I guarantee that it doesn’t work 98 times out of 100.

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I was in a small group in the back yard of someone’s home when the talk turned to fear of terrorism. We were sitting next to the man’s pool while kids played in the water and the adults talked about scarier things.

“I’m just about scared to travel anywhere these days,” the man said. “The world is so scary now because of the terrorists. I’m sure not going to New York City or some big place like that. Why would anyone even think about living there these days?”

I hadn’t been saying anything, because I usually get myself into social trouble by being the lone dissenter in such situations. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, though, so I asked the man if he knew that more people were killed every single year in swimming pools than were killed in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Someone scoffed. A couple of people laughed.

“Oh, the pool’s safe,” the man said. “We keep the kids away when we’re not around, so we can control this. But when you’re dealing with terrorists, you don’t have any control.”

I kept my mouth shut, because I knew there was no way to make him understand a very simple statistical fact. Almost 3,000 people died in the World Trade Centers attack, but close to 3,500 people die in U.S. swimming pools each and every year. Tell me which you should be more afraid of.

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There was a brief news item Sunday about police raiding a plane full of passengers in Detroit and taking three of them off for questioning. We’re now seeing just how clearly the incident points out that Americans have become paranoid and stupid in their irrational fear of terrorism.

That’s Shoshana Hebshi on the right. She’s a suburban housewife from Ohio. Her father is from Saudi Arabia and her mother is Jewish. She’s just a typical American with mixed ethnicity. But because she happened to be seated on a Frontier Airlines plane from Denver to Detroit Sunday with two men from India — who also didn’t know each other and didn’t talk to each other — passengers and crew were suspicious of them.

What were they suspicious of? There’s no reason to think they were suspicious of anything other than the fact that they looked a bit different from the rest of us. We don’t have first-hand accounts from the two Indian men, but Hebshi wrote extensively about her experience on Monday.

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