While I think the "War on Terror" has been mostly a huge waste of tax payer money and a threat to civil liberties, when comparing it to lighting you have to con

While I think the "War on Terror" has been mostly a huge waste of tax payer money and a threat to civil liberties, when comparing it to lighting you have to consider that the rate of lightning strikes are probably fairly constant over time subject only to slow processes like climate change. Terrorism could potentially grow quite quickly so perhaps it does make sense to expend a bit more effort than protecting people from lightning. We seem to have failed to do that in an entirely rational way but the lightning - terror comparison seems invalid. Probably better to compare it with preventable deaths from some cause like car accidents or pool drownings (which is probably even worse for the anti-terror lobby) and which might get out of hand unless there is active prevention. Though again the cost benefit compared with preventing death from other causes doesn't help the authoritarians.