February 3, 2003
(Today the Wall Street Journal
Best of the Web
author James Taranto based his counter-argument against those who claim that War with Iraq will bring terrorists attacks on the US on the statement that Y2K was a non-existant hoax. As one who has been involved in computers and technology for the past 40 years, I cannot let that foolish statement stand unchallenged).
Mr Taranto:
Over the past several months I have grown fond of reading your columns for they seemed to apply logic and realism to the issues of the day and so help make some sense of what goes around in this world.
However, after reading today's column and its remarks about the famous Y2K problem, I was appalled by the ignorance and the arrogance of your statements. I thought I was reading one of those non-intellectual arguments brought forth by liberals that you so successfully lampoon. And I am wondering now if I didn't just enjoy your comments because we were on the same side of certain war issues and was just letting you stroke my ego.
Referring to Y2K you stated: "In the event, nothing happened. Zero, zip, zilch. The world on Jan. 1, 2000, ran every bit as smoothly as it had on Dec. 31, 1999. Y2K was the hoax of the century."
You couldn't be more wrong. If you wanted to state that it was over-hyped or that many people were trying to make fortunes or reputations on other people's fears of the future, you would have been right. But to say, as you did, that it was a complete hoax not only proclaims your personal ignorance of why and what happened with the Y2K bug, but you also demean the intelligence and work efforts of the thousands of business and corporate professionals who's actions stemmed the potential for disaster and turned it into the non-experience that you enjoyed.
I have come to expect more of you and your staff.
If you need a tutorial on why Y2K was real and why it finally didn't affect our work-a-day lives, I am sure that I, or any number of other competent technologists across this country, could help. I suspect, though, you neither need nor want the education - its no longer important. You were just looking for a low hanging branch to hang you argument on.
And it is a shame - there is a parallel here that could have provided a springboard for a clear statement. Those that peddle the argument that we must fear increased terror from taking a strong stand fail to realize that the terror is there and will occur anyway unless we fix it - as we fixed Y2K before it could affect our lives on January 1, 2000.
-Murrel Rhodes