This is largely in response to Kal, who takes exception with those of us who view Boston's response to the ATHF advertisements as a bit, well, stupid.
The most rational response to terrorism is twofold:
1) Prosecute/kill as many extant terrorists as you can without adding to the list of grievances the population from whence they come have against you (getting rid of terrorists is kind of pointless if you are creating new ones through the very same process.)
2) Proceed with life as normal on the home front, implementing preventative measurements only in the face of clearly defined threats.
That's strategy. Tactics, obviously, could be debated ad infinitum, especially on the first point. Books are written about such things, and I am ill-suited to make a detailed case.
But what I really wanted to talk about in light of this week's stupidity in Boston was the second point.
It is critical to realize that terrorism is a tactic, not an ideology. The point is to break the collective will of a government and/or its people with relatively little resources. Terrorists don't invade and occupy countries. They blow up buses and shopping malls. They hold children hostage. They kidnap easy targets and video cutting their heads off. When they get lucky, they hijack a plane and fly it into a skyscraper.
The greatest asset that terrorists have is the pervasive and disproportionate fear we have of dying in any way that would make the evening news.
Even in Israel, you're more likely to die in a car wreck than you are as a result of a suicide bombing. In the US, you're more likely to die from falling down the stairs or choking on a piece of food.
The body count of a terrorist attack is nearly irrelevant from the point of view of the terrorists' objective. If it slows the economy, makes people more afraid, puts pressure on the government, then the attack is successful. It doesn't matter if one person dies or 3200.
And the real killer here is that prevention is basically impossible, especially if suicide bombers are involved. A suicide bomb set off in line at the security checkpoint of an airport would be nearly as successful as one on a plane. A shopping mall would be as effective as a courthouse.
The only thing we can really control is the response we have. If we want to confound the terrorists, we should keep flying, keep shopping, keep making money. Keep watching decadent TV, eating with the hand we wipe our ass with, drinking, fucking joyously, and living the good life of a free and unafraid people.
But most importantly, we should not panic.
This isn't to say that some basic, common sense security measures shouldn't be implemented. For example, not allowing guns and explosives onto an airplane is probably a pretty good idea (and was, I might add, a policy in effect long before 9.11.01). Submitting every 3rd person to "additional screening" even if that person happens to be a paraplegic grandmother from Nebraska is stupid.
Checking out a report of a "suspicious device" is probably a good idea. Assuming at the outset that it is a bomb and shutting down an entire city until you know otherwise is stupid.
What the city of Boston (and though I took a stab at Boston yesterday, I have no doubt this could happen almost anywhere in the US the way things are these days) has shown the terrorists is that all you have to do to sow fear and chaos is leave some strange objects scattered around high-profile areas. That's it. You don't have to smuggle uranium or anthrax. You don't have to take the risk of manufacturing explosives. You could fill 20 Jansport backpacks with old phone books, have people drop them at 20 subway stations simultaneously, and probably keep every emergency responder in the city tied up for at least an hour or two.
And then you could do some real damage.
And while my criticism is leveled primarily at governments here, the governments are responding to the people. People in the US expect the government to be guardian-protector, to not merely respond to Bad Things when they happen, but keep them from ever happening in the first place. It is part and parcel of the same mentality that expects the government to ensure health care, educate your children, protect your business from foreign competition, and just generally make sure that everything is going to be OK.
As a people, we really, really need to get a grip. Our survival depends on it.
1 comment:
Brian,
I think "panic" is the wrong word to describe what happened in Boston. They shut down a couple of roadways and transit lines for twenty-thirty minutes while they checked out the devices. They blew up the first one, and then just started pulling them off of buildings/structures when they realized what the deal was.
Complicating matters was an acutal fake pipe bomb found that morning attached to a bridge support (and in a hospital), as well as reports of suspicious activity in other cities (I think DC had the metro briefly evacuated that morning) and the busting up of a terrorist plot in England that morning.
So net result was people had to sit in traffic for a bit, some folks had to take a bus rather than a train, and Channel 25, our local sensationalist tabloid outlet, had themselves a heap of fun.
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