Iowahawk has discovered the first draft of history professor David A. Bell's controversial piece "Was 9/11 really that bad."

An excerpt:

No disrespect to the victims of 9/11 or to the men and women of our armed forces, but by the standards of past wars, 3000 yuppie bond traders and a couple of high-rise developments is basically geopolitical chump change. Okay, so the widdle Jihadis want to level an occasional Manhattan office building, let the baby have his bottle. As the big star on the international stage, the United States needs to show it is secure enough to take a few zingers from the B-list comedians at the annual global Friars Club Roast. When we nuked Hiroshima, did the Japanese whine and bitch and send their armies to invade us out of spite? No, they made a couple of Godzilla movies, got over it, and moved on to making transistor radios and Toyotas. In the history biz, we call this “making lemons into lemonade.”

Here’s another interesting statistic: even if one counts our dead in Iraq and Afghanistan as casualties of the war against terrorism, which brings us to about 6,500, we should remember that roughly the same number of Americans die every two months in automobile accidents. Let’s face it, this means we could each probably get a low deductible no-fault terrorist policy from Allstate for $30 or $40 a month. We could also save another 50% by switching to Geico and cutting down on our geopolitical road rage.

Of course, the 9/11 attacks also conjured up the possibility of far deadlier attacks to come. Ooooohhh, booga booga booga. Despite the nightmarish fantasies of the post-9/11 era (e.g. the TV show "24’s" nuclear attack on Los Angeles), Islamist terrorists have not come close to deploying weapons other than boxcutters, knives, guns, conventional explosives, and maybe a little anthrax here and there. And despite the nightmarish fantasies of 1980s slasher movies, these lumbering, inept, under-armed Islamist Jasons and Freddy Krugers can be easily be avoided if we only remember two little rules: (a) do not split up in the woods, and (b) don’t go on a moonlight skinny-dip with the hot blonde chick. A war it may be, but does it really deserve comparison to an existential battle against a demonically-possessed ventriloquist doll?

Read the whole thing.