Somnolence.

Editor,

American policy makers' thinking is upside down.

When it comes to military planning, worst-case scenarios and preemption dominate. But when it comes to environmental, financial, economic, health, and other questions that are vital to the security and well-being of the American people, actually bad circumstances and actually bad inevitabilities are pooh-poohed as long as corporate profits and stock market indexes keep going up.

The U.S.A. seems to have lost all sense of direction and all sense of proportion. Madmen mow down movie-goers, first graders, and innocent bystanders in drug dealers' territories in American cities, and no one can do anything about it but suggest that everyone carry an M-16.

Meanwhile, 13th-Century warlords half a world away who have no air force, no navy, no tanks, no cruise missiles, no armies, no nothing really, are the scariest and most important issue on policy makers' minds because if they get their hands on a nuclear weapon -- which they would deliver how? -- or a vial of Ebola virus or god-knows-what, they will threaten the destruction of the United States.

Hysteria over phantasms, somnolence for reality.

Re: "U.S. Shift Poses Risk to Pakistan" (5/26/2013)