By Philip R. O'Connor
TCS Daily
Any leader disposed toward treating these decisions in exclusively personal terms is unfit for leadership. But what happens if our leaders have no referent for the human calculus of preserving the nation's security? Suppose they have no idea or refuse to even consider the price they are willing for us to pay for our security. We recognize the inevitability of deaths in our police and fire services and among our utility and sanitation workers. As a society we know that, taken together, these four professions alone have an average daily duty-related death rate of about one per day. But we also appreciate the absolute importance of those jobs for our daily well being. (more)
