Schneier on Security

Well said.

What all of us should do is send a copy of this to our elected officials and to the press and see if they wake up and smell reality.

My idealistic self says they will listen; my more realistic self figures they will keep the fear mongering going.

I fear the latter self is right.

> And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

Is it not perhaps a tad presumptious to speak on behalf of terrorists? Or to equate travel inconveniences with ... er ... death? or changes in foreign policy and military alliances?

Don't forget the incident yesterday in The Netherlands:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/08/23/schiphol.ap/index.html

A Northwest airplaine was escorted back to
Schiphol by two f16 fighterjets
The minister of justice just anounced
that it's probably not terrorist related
after all.

"Or to equate travel inconveniences with ... er ... death?"

People actually might die because of travel inconveniences if their local fireman missed his shift, or fail to see their loved one for the last time before they die.

It's not just -1hour vs +1death.

I think we've crossed a line here. Whats to stop terriorists now just getting on flights and acting suspiciously on purpose. If no crime was committed (I was just checking my watch, saying my prayers, going to the bathroom etc.) they can caues disruption, create paranoia and terror at will and get off scott free.

"Is it not perhaps a tad presumptious to speak on behalf of terrorists?"

The clue is in the name, dude. Responding to terror without trying to make *any* guesses about the terrorists mental state would be an interesting challenge.

Your best Wired editorial yet. I only wish more people would read this and agree with you.

We have to trade-off travel inconveniences against death every time we travel. If you don't want to make that trade-off, and you believe that the risk of death trumps the inconvenience every time, then you have to ground all passenger aircraft permanently. Otherwise, you're into the business of choosing an acceptable balance between safety and convenience -- and the current hysteria is definitely moving that balance too far away from convenience, given that the actual risk from terrorist attacks on planes is far lower than perfectly mundane risks such as driving to the airport.

For some reason, as I read this the following quote kept replaying in my brain:

"The only thing we have to fear is Fear itself."

Maybe we should quit talking about terrorism, and just call it what it is: Fear Itself.

~EdT.

While I feel your comments are correct with respect to the political goals of the terrorist, I think that they downplay the hatred our policies have created in some persons. People do not blow themselves up our of a desire to disrupt someone elses life, they do it because something has kindled a hatred that make them want to destroy us.

@Frank Ch. Eigler:

In the US (and, I suspect, most European countries), terrorists are not a serious danger to people's lives. There are scads of things that have killed over three thousand Americans in the last five years.

If you actually want to make things safer for the US people, work on reducing drunk driving, or getting more people affordable basic medical care, or reducing gang violence. Something that actually kills significant numbers of people.

If the likelihood of being killed by a terrorist is too high for you, I don't know what you can do. Certainly you can't get in a car to go anywhere, but household accidents kill more people than terrorists. You could try catatonia, but do you know how many people die in hospitals in ways that can be prevented?

We are spending incredible amounts of money on screening (assuming you're willing to admit that people's time is worth something), and we're barely any safer because of it. It's time we stopped focussing intently on making an exceedingly safe method of transportation even safer, and took a look at the real dangers in life.

The Greeks warred with the Turks on and off for 900 years. The Greeks massacred 20,000 Moslems in April 1821, then declared their independence from Turkey. 100 year later they were still at war. During the 1920's it all ended. It's an amazing tribute to the Russians. A united Greece and Turkey became partners in NATO. An old Istanbul grocer explained it simply. "The Greeks don't like the Russians much and I hate them." Schoolchildren learned a new word, Zito meaning long live in Greek.

No, it is not presumptious to assume you know what terrorists want - Mao Tse Tung said it best; "The purpose of terrorism is to terrorise". Bruce's article is the best thing I have seen written recently on this subject (and I frequently disagree with Bruce's opinions - not in this case); the "liquid explosive" terrorists have succeeded perfectly without getting on a single aircraft or detonating a single bomb. We *are* terrorised. Air travel is disrupted. Millions of dollars worth of economic damage has been done (I bet the Board of Ferrovia, the Spanish transport company who have just bought the operator of most British airports, BAA, are pretty pissed off. I'm not ... I was a BAA stockholder.)

Of course, it doesn't help that Governments and the media are quite happy to further the stories, since it helps one to pass otherwise unacceptable legislation and the other to sell newspapers.

> We're all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain.

Bruce, are you really more "jumpy" as a result of the scare, or are you just expressing your sympathy for people who are?

I'm not more jumpy, and I live here. I expect the police (etc) to be investigating people on suspicion of terrorism, and I expect them to make arrests from time to time. That's their job - a demonstration that they're doing it should, if anything, be reassuring.

What does concern me is that I think the authorities may have made a bit of a mess of it (half the suspects still haven't been charged, and I'm fairly sure the government has deliberately exaggerated the threat they posed). But that doesn't make me any more nervous, just disappointed and angry...

@Jim

You have forgoton to mention Cyprus, where the Greeks and Turks still face each other with supposed war like intent.

In the early 1970's the Greek Junta managed to get it's officers incharge of a militia/police organisation in Cyprus. The result was a number of incidents where the Turkish Cypriots where terorised and murdered. The result was that Turky invaded Northan Cyprus which they occupied to an extent in percentage terms to that of the Turkish population. A peace keeping force finally went in and the Green line was formed to keep the two sides seperated.

A very short while later the Greek Millitary Junta collapsed but guess what the Green line is still there today, and Greek Cypriots keep blocking any attempt to get unification of Cyprus.

It is possibly for this reason and the more recent Eastern European (Surbia etc) conflicts why Continental European countries are not keen on being involved with peace keeping activities unless the ground rules are very very clearly stated, and an end plan is inplace.

We having nothing to fear but fear itself.... and I'm afraid of our response, and the type of people "attracted" to the kind of power that the govs are demanding.

First a quote:
Mr Reid said had the attack gone ahead it would have caused a loss of life of "unprecedented scale". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4778575.stm

Yet lets look at a precedent:
http://www.hitler.org/ww2-deaths.html

56 MILLION people....many think that this is rather underestimated, but its in the ball park. ~4000 people is a disater to be sure, but not in anyway unprecedented.

Even road deaths in the US for 2002 was over 40 000.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-22-road-deaths_x.htm
http://www.driveandstayalive.com/info%20section/statistics/stats-usa_indiv-states_per-capita_2002.htm

Now when I bring this up, others often say, "yea but a terroist attack is so unexpected". How many expect to get killed in a car crash?
The people that are left behind or the innocent that are killed. Are they any less important just because it was "just a car crash"?

We don't feel like ignoring the terrorists is a good trade off. But investing more into cutting the road toll in the US would save many many more lives even if a sep 11 was pulled off *every year*.

When i take my daughter to a feild in Turki, with over 8,000 ANZCs were killed during WWI. I'm hoping it will put things into a proper perspective for her.

Greg

Can we please quit calling them terrorists and start calling them what they really are: anarchists? These people exist to create chaos and to undermine the structures of society and civilization. Just as blowing things up are tactics of creating chaos, so is their religious affiliation merely a convenient recruiting tactic.

Given the above term change, I disagree with the following:
"I am not saying that the politicians and press are terrorists, or that they share any of the blame for terrorist attacks."

These politicians and so-called journalists are, in fact, terrorists. They are perpetuating terror in society using various movie plot FUD stories about the actions of said anarchists.

for a 24 year old its hard to believe whats happening in this world right now.
even here in germany they started to prepare people for their insane government operations against terrorism by showing these fear-news 24/7!

so far it turned out like this:
a new law that says that isp´s have to save log-files for 90 days,
plus we got new biometric passports with rfid-chips, which will be totally hackable half a year from now (theres already a clone by lukas grunewald).

wiretapping, (e-)surveillance, gene-databases...everything gets monitored.
this is no fiction, we are already living in this state of fear.
:(

Zito says, terrorism is a dead end and war can only get you so far. It can get you dead, so war is a dead end too. If people hate terrorism, they are likely to hate war. That's why you avoid war. It's just not popular at a great expense. Terrorism is war on a tight budget.

A big problem here is that while you and I and any other infosec professional can look at this and give this type of advice, and it seems like kindergarten instruction - so sensible and obvious - it is a nightmare to try and penetrate the various selfish reasons for politicians and the media to hype terror messages - as Huge mentioned earlier.

As the wider population gets more hacked off with the knee-jerk reactions removing our liberties while offering no added security, it may get easier to have our messages heard. The audience may become more sympathetic.

I reckon it'll be a long slog though

I didn't know about Cyprus, so how could I have forgotten something I didn't know?
I don't know.

The majority of people in the US, UK etc all agree with you, Bruce. The problem is that we elected a gang of twisted, mendacious lunatics and their terms aren't up yet.

On our recent trip my wife's purse created a ruckus. Supervisors were called in and some myopic troll with blue gloves valiantly fished through her purse for 10 minutes and finally brandished his prize; an old tube of chapstick. After sniffing it and having to consult with another TSA guru, he still couldn't decide if it was ok to let such a dangerous item on board. My wife told him to trash it.

I felt immensely better knowing the flight was saved from a 120 lb librarian with chapped lips.

"Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat."

The politicains are only helping themselves, which is what they do best. And the press is only trying to sell stories, which is what they do best. Terrorism serves many purposes and those sly enough to take advantage will continue to do so as long as it benefits them. They couldn't care less how adversely it affects the rest of us.

Information I didn't know but I forgot. That would make a good book. Absofuckinglutely Unsure.

Well spoken, Bruce.

@ TOMBOT

Perhaps we should put a twist on an old watergate maxim: "Follow the Fear"...

"I felt immensely better knowing the flight was saved from a 120 lb librarian with chapped lips."

I also routinely fly with a small tube of chap-stic with me. I do the sensible thing; I keep it in my pocket, keep my mouth shut, and walk through the metal detector. Never had a problem. I wonder how many other people do the same?

@Tired Ben: Can you please call them what they are, and call them nihilists, fascists, or psychopaths? Or why not simply terrorists, since the ones in question lately have no announced objective, and the only one we can say for certain that they do have, is terror.

I can't speak for other anarchists, but I resent your grouping me with anyone like that.

Next you'll be telling us Noam Chomsky was behind the WTC attacks.

http://www.zmag.org/AWatch/awatch.htm

Get a clue, dude, and don't lecture others on English when you can't speak it yourself.

This erratic behavior opens the door to 'plausible deniability' terrorism; consider the following scenario (especially when the anthrax fear was running high)

Sit in a visible public place, eat a powdered sugar donut, leaving a mess. Disappear. Wait for someone to panic. Even if you are identified, it would be hard to legally quantify sloppy eating as a terrorist act, but the goal of panic is accomplished.

@TOMBOT: "The majority of people in the US, UK etc all agree with you, Bruce. The problem is that we elected a gang of twisted, mendacious lunatics and their terms aren't up yet."

You get the prize for most defeatist statement of the week.

1) You sound very sure that they were elected.

2) "A gang of twisted, mendacious lunatics" should be allowed to serve terms anywhere except in prison ... in which universe?

3) "We" ... speak for yourself, see 1 and also

4) If "The majority of people in the US, UK etc all agree" then where is the harm, in a democracy, in turning these sadsacks out? Oh .. the rules? The rules are stopping us? Damn. Terrorists win again.

All the talk of the value of one life versus the inconvenience of one hour has gotten me thinking. How many lifetimes of man-hours have been wasted due to extra delays at airports caused by overreaction to fear of terrorism? I'm happy to guess at least a dozen.

> I am not saying that the politicians and press are terrorists, or that they share any of the blame for terrorist attacks.

If there is a way to profit from something, it will be done.

(Certain) politicians and the press, who both carry a very large responsibility in our society, profit hugely from terrorist attacks, so there is a very powerful incentive to let them happen. This motivation for terrorist attacks stems from inside our society, not from "the terrorists" (who are usually viewed as standing apart from it).

As long as politicians and press profit from terrorist attacks, they share a responsibility. This may not be exactly the same as "blame", but I tend to view blame as irrelevant anyway. Responsibility is what counts.

The fear of terrorism is very real and very rational; the measures against it will vary from effective to silly until we reach an equilibrium; but this claim that we're doing what the terrorists "want" is absurd.

What the terrorists want is for the US and Europe to surrender to Islamic rule: nothing less will satify their demands. They're quite explicit about it in their statements and their writings; which is why, for example, Moslem protesters in Washington D.C. carry posters that show an Islamic flag flying over the White House.

As for the incident with the two Arab-speaking men removed from the plane: I've seen reports (I can't find them now) that an Arabic-speaking woman overheard them say words to the effect of "these are the last thirty minutes of our lives." I'd leave the plane too if I heard that.

In 2002, I went to Philly on a business trip. Since I had never visited the city, and as a history nut, I was especially interested in seeing the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall among other sites. Both were cordoned off with the bright orange barriers, and you had to go through a metal detector at both sites (if I remember correctly, but definitely at the Hall).

I decided that day that the terrorists had won, and it was a blow-out. As an American, I could not see two landmarks without first being treated as threat. Two months later, I was searched on all four legs of a trip. When and how do we really win the "War on Terrorism?"

Nice post, Bruce.

@Moshe Yudkowsky

I don't care about terrorism. I care about the rapid removal of my rights in the name of terrorism. This has happend many times in that past for many different reason. It has never lead anywhere where i would want to be. The most popular recent event would be the gastopoe.

We do not seem to learn from history.

Fear of terrorism is irrational by any rational or logical reasoning. No matter how you slice it.

Greg

Considering the current American political attitude toward religion, I find the story of the Canadian doctor who was removed for praying to be especially sad. What ignorance!

There are two schools of thought on dealing with bullies:

Stand up to him/her -- maybe you win, maybe you lose.. but odds are that bully will stand down before it comes to that.

Ignore them and they will go away -- maybe they'll got tired of it, or maybe they'll consider it a challenge and escalate to the apparent situation where you have no choice but to confront.

You'll never find a solution for terrorism/anarchist/whatever you want to call it. People are not computers and while they are predictable to a degree, the ability of free thought and higher level thinking will always lead to potential acts of cruelty.

How much of your privacy/freedom are you willing to sacrifice? And at what point would too much control put you on the other side of the fence? The one fighting for your own belief?

Yes, 9/11 is tragic and should have trigged the massive search and capture of those involved at all levels. It should have brought to light the issue with airplane controls and safety as well as other means of travel (a bomb on the golden gate bridge in rush hour would be just as costly, if not more). It should have brought about changes and awareness.

To a degree, I agree with some setiments above. The press and politicians are just as largely to blame. Their beliefs of instilling fear/regulations promoted by fear is helping the "terror" win. There is a fine line between terror and aware. You don't tell someone to walk down a dark alley and not pay attention to the surroundings,do you?

"Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up 10 planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that's basically what's happening right now."

You left out the 1000+ people killed part.

"Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers' perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they've succeeded."

Well gee, wouldn't it be nice if they all they did was sit in a comfy office somewhere and maintain a terror website, updated with daily threats? Then everybody can go there and get their drama. Except that doesn't work, the terror part comes from the slight chance of succeeding in a mass killing.

Ran across this quote the other day. Similar in vein to the Roosevelt quote.

"The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology." ~ Ayn Rand

@ Moshe Yudkowsky:

Not all terrorists are Islamic extremists who want US and Europe under Islamic rule. What they do have in common is that they seek to use fear to gain leverage over people. So yes, giving in the the fear IS doing what the terrorists want you to do. Refuse to succumb to fear, and you take away their leverage. To me, that's a more effective measure of combating terrorism than anything the government's proposed so far.

An interesting thing I've noticed is how society's response to terrorism fits with the definition of Battered Woman Syndrome. Given the stimulant is the same--that is, physical violence--this really isn't surprising.

Here's a short description of BWS -

Symptoms: BWS is a psychological reaction that can be expected to occur in normal people who are exposed to repeated trauma, such as family violence. It includes at least three groups of symptoms that assist the mind and body in preparing to defend against threats. Psychologists call it the "fight or flight" response.

The "Fight" Response Mode: In the "fight" mode, the body and mind prepare to deal with danger by becoming hypervigilant to cues of potential violence, resulting in an exaggerated startle response. The automatic nervous system becomes operational and the individual becomes more focused on the single task of self defense. This impairs concentration and causes physiological responses usually associated with high anxiety. In serious cases, fearfulness and panic disorders are present and phobic disorders may also result. Irritability and crying are typical symptoms of this stage.

The "Flight" Response Mode: The "flight" response mode often alternates with the fight pattern. Most individuals would run away from danger if they could do so safely. When physical escape is actually or perceived as impossible, then mental escape occurs. This is the avoidance or emotional numbing stage where denial, minimization, rationalization and disassociation are subconsciously used as ways to psychologically escape from the threat or presence of violence.

Cognitive Ability and Memory Loss: The third major impact of BWS is to the cognitive and memory areas. Here, the victim begins to have intrusive memories of the abuse or may actually develop psychogenic amnesia and not always remember important details or events. The victim may have trouble following his or her thoughts in a logical way, being distracted by intrusive memories that may be flashbacks to previous battering incidents. The victim may disassociate himself or herself when faced with painful events, memories, reoccurring nightmares or other associations not readily apparent to the observer.

I recommend a war on cars, accidents involving gas sucking, oil spewing coffins on wheels are the real problem.

People terrorize the poor Earth every day by sealing it up in a concrete tomb, chasing away plant life and human life.

One day when all the ice melts people will look around and say, "hey, the Earth can't breathe, what did we do?" but by then they will be so fat they won't be able to speak, they will spend their days rolling around on beaches like drunken seals, still wagging their tongues about their little techy trinkets while the pollution of their design continues to worsen the state of all life on Earth.

Wars and rumors of wars isn't some dot on a time line to call back a ninja savior from the sky, it's happened since ancient times. Meanwhile, our Earth needs help, but no one cares, because there's always another new song to discover for the iPod, another stupid myspace page to read, another opinion to launch to sugar our ego while our fingernails grow longer, bellies grow larger, and the Earth continues to be sealed up like a tomb for profit.

Funny thing is, if you read Richard Clarke's book, Against All Enemies, this is precisely the tack that Clinton took. It wasn't until the Bush team came in and dropped the ball that everything went to shit.

Tired Ben,

Please learn what the word 'anarchist' means before you start making things up. If anarchy means what you say, then such an absurd definition would lead you to conclude that FDR,Hitler,Mao,Stalin,Castro,Che Guevera, et al are anarchists!

Anarchy means no rule, not random spouts of violence.

Government means rule, systematic propaganda and violence, and a random scattering of people that seek to gain the top positions.

The moment you use aggression is the moment become a non-anarchist. Why? because aggression is rule, therefore it is antithetical to anarchism.

Western civilization has always been the home of anarchist ideas, because naturally this is where liberty has had the longest history.

Perhaps you should study some leading anarchists: Proudhon, Spooner, B. Tucker, Molinari, LeFavre, Rothbard, Hoppe, Block, Kinsella, and Rockwell, before jumping on gravy train of state propaganda.

---

If one changes the word 'terrorism' to 'guerilla warfare' one comes to a very different conclusion as to the cause of it: US foreign policy.

The point of terrorism isn't terror. The point of terrorism is power. A terrorist tries to take power away from a government by making that government look like it's failing at one of its basic tasks: protecting its citizens.

Governments fight back by providing 'security theatre' (not my phrase, but a good one). They make a big show of thwarting terrorists. If an actual threat can't be found, it suffices to concoct a reasonably believable one.

If security theatre is done well, then when a terrorist succeeds, it's a process failure, not incompetency. A scapegoat is found and punished. No power lost.

It's not done consciously, but this is what is really happening.

I wholeheartedly agree with almost all of the essay except for one point - the inclusion of the case of smoke alarm tampering on the list of false positives. MHO is that that guy should've been sent over to Guantanamo and lost there together with all evidence of his existence - the danger of an Air Canada 797-type disaster is very much real regardless of what terrorists want.

"The point of terrorism is power. "

If you claim to be my sovereign leader and then club me over the head, my attempt to stop you or fight back will be labeled as terrorism.

Terrorism need not be power-seeking, it can also be power-repelling.

If the American Revolution was not won by the Americans, but by the British, history would have written off the dissenting Americans as anti-social terrorists.

Great advice, Bruce.

I think one of the most important repercussions of a generalized "refusal to being terrorized" is that the whole logic and leverage of "fear politics" would be undermined. Once politicians felt that FUD was not the best discourse to sway the masses, it would be substituted with something else... and this would break the current positive feedback.

it seems a lot of psychology comes into view when thinking it trough.

Isn't it also the effect of: people are beaten numb when an attack takes place, so the next attack must be bigger in order to raise more fear?

Why escort a passenger plane with fighter jets? What can they do? If the passenger plane blows up, will they finish the job or just look on helplessly? What a waste!

We have two choices...unpanic or 1984. We either take a step back and realize that there are much easier US targets than the airlines or we continue to enjoy being harrassed and strip searched by the TSA every time we board a plane, because it will only get worse.

Think about it realistically - airports with bomb sniffing dogs or a cross town bus or the local school building that have little to no security? If I can see how much easier and more effective other targets would be, I'm sure Joe "Blowup-meownself-inna-crowd" Mohammed can too. Banning hair-gel on airplanes can't stop terrorism, but it does destroy the freedom that so many have fought and died for.

Excellent essay!

Here's my comment.

The USA may have won the Cold War by bankrupting the Soviet Union. And terrorist may win this war by causing so many costly responses that they bankrupt the USA. It is incredible how much value terrorists are getting out of their actions for such a small expenditure of resources.

My God, finally a voice of reason in the media! What a well thought out and written summary of the sad state of affairs this "War on Terror" has led us. I am so sick of idiot's "the end justifies the means" and "won't somebody think of the children" rhetoric. Thank you for speaking the truth, and refusing to propogate more
media hype on this subject.

Well said. Well done.

this is the best description i've read on terrorism & our country's failed response to it. The proof is in the difference
between how the U.S. handle threats and how Isreal handles them. for
20 years, El Al airlines has not had a single hijacking. why?
because they implement security functions that WORK. and when
terrorists strike their land, they don't do outlandish, useless scare tactics like ban liquids on planes. Since this ban really is a worthless jesture on the part of the US Gov't., you have to wonder
what the REAL reason behind it is. is this the administration trying
to win image points from a population in which only %36 approve of
him? is this the response from disconnected, ivory towered agencies?
or is it all just a part of an agenda to grab more power, bypass
constitutional checks and balances, and use terror as a wedge issue
to do it? i would argue that the current administration BEST FRIEND
right now is Al-Qaeda.. how else would they have gotten away with
violating so many laws? as you said in your article bruce, it
doesn't really matter if the terrorists succeeded in the london
plot if the reaction is the same. we end up voting for and being
happy with loss of freedom, privacy, and increasingly intrusive
gov't. monitoring...in the end, isn't this what the terrorists
want? to destroy our open and free societies? to destroy western
culture? why are we doing it for them?

I've felt this way for a long time...back when it was just street gang mayhem. Ever stop to think that every kidnapping victim, widowed spouse, orphaned child ends up becoming a spokesperson for said terrorist organization? They're going to talk about it. "I was kidnapped by blank. My mom was killed by blank. My husband was taken by blank and beheaded in the streets." It becomes a cycle of promotion and advertisement.

Bravo, Sir, well said and well put!

This is too simplistic. Terrorists are not doing all of this because they want to terrify us. There's little to be gained by us being afraid. Their goals are myriad, but they usually entail changes in foreign policy, such as removing troops from their region, not propping up weak governments, not selling arms to Israel and complaining that Iran is selling arms to Hezbollah, removing Israel from its West-mandated creation out of other people's lands, etc.

Sure, scaring the populace is part of the strategy because the populace can effect political change, but the goal is not to scare us into believing they are boogie men!

Just as the American revolutionaries used asymmetrical tactics to fight the Red Coats, these groups must do the same because they cannot possibly hope to win fighting head on.

If fear were the only goal, I'm sure we'd see more of what is suggested: people not breaking the law but acting suspiciously to create more fear. People leaving backpacks here and there. Heck, we don't even have discos or easy targets being bombed, nor do we have terrorists doing sniper attacks, etc. These would all create fear and are very easy to accomplish, yet these are not being done. Are we really to believe that they cannot accomplish any of these simple attacks, yet they can blow a hole in the Cole, blow up two embassies minutes apart, take down both WTC buildings, hit the Pentagon, elude capture in Tora Bora, etc., but they cannot put a backpack on a train?

Al Qaeda, in particular, has been very deliberate in its attacks to not just create random terror, but to attack highly symbolic or miltary targets.

Just as you say, 99% of Americans seem to think the terrorists' goals are to harm us. What they really seek is to change our way of life, remove our freedoms. Our government is more than willing to oblige the panicked populace that freely give up civil liberties in order to feel "safe". "Hey, I don't do anything wrong...what is wrong with the government monitoring my emails and phone calls?".

I find it ironic that our government lauds our soldiers overseas for "fighting for our freedoms" (although how the war liberating Iraqi citizens is protecting American freedoms is beyond me), meanwhile the same politicians are quickly removing said freedoms in the name of the "war on terror". I suppose our soldiers need to come back home and march to Washington if they really want to protect our freedoms.

 BRAVO!  Well said Bruce.

For a long time I have been concerened that we are focusing too much on terrorism, and draining resources away from disaster prepardness (see Katrina), and old fashoned street crime that sill kills thousands of us.

I do not beleve that the FBI's #1 goal should be preventing terrorists.  Is it really right to tell a kidnaping victim that their case will take 2nd priority to catching Bin Laden, or worse... tracking down tips from a racist old lady in a Shoney's?

In my view, we are at best saving a few lives from terrorism, at the cost of many more lives, and untold suffering that could otherwise be prevented.

@urbanek, you have a very strong point on the escape-goat-ism mechanism currently applied.

This article brings you back to the only way that terrorist have really been defeated: by changing the living conditions of the populations from where their recruits come and by prosecuting the most extreme and hard core as delinquents or criminals. Declaring a war against them is saying they are worthy of the ultimate state of mobilization a country can achieve, nothing else can be done after this, therefore if it fails, it equals defeat. On the other hand, downsizing them to "crooks" takes a part of their panache away.
This has been applied and has worked (in Chile, the return to democracy led to the extinction of the “Lautaro� terrorist/freedom-fighter group, while the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front seized the moment and became a political movement).

So, if effective action is possible, the question then becomes, is there an interest by those who yield power, both political and economical, to do away with this menace?

@PerfDave: "All the talk of the value of one life versus the inconvenience of one hour has gotten me thinking. How many lifetimes of man-hours have been wasted due to extra delays at airports caused by overreaction to fear of terrorism? I'm happy to guess at least a dozen."

Let's assume people live to an average of 80 years old. 80 years * 365.25 days/year (accomodates leap years) * 24 hours per day = 701,280 hours per life. Now, from page 30 of http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/reports/2005/december/0512atcr.pdf we get that from January-September of 2005 there was just over 410 million passengers. Assuming everyone arrived about an hour earlier than they otherwise would to allow time for the 'security' screening process, which has been basically advised ever since 9/11, some 584 lifetimes were wasted waiting in line in the first 9 months of 2005. Extrapolate that out and something nicely over 2000 lifetimes have been wasted waiting in line.

I've commented on-and-off of how the press uses terrorism as a marketing tool *and* with how politics uses it to "go for the gut" but this article pretty much puts it together.

Terrorism, Politics and the Press are symbiotic, aren't they? Each is "gaming the system".

What I find amusing is that this whole issue has already been seen in fiction: Anyone here remember "Dragnet" in the mid-1980s with Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd?

It's all a matter of manipulation, right?

Moshe Yudkowsky, you clearly appear to have a predisposition against Islam, which has clouded your view of a well-constructed essay that supports the crux of its title. If you feel the essay is, absurd, then provided some meaningful comment instead of unsubstantiated comment and anti-Islamic drivel.

For those interested the Guardian newspaper has an interview with the two men ejected from the aircraft at Malaga, Spain:
http://tinyurl.com/za3zq

When a member of the British government can say in public that "rights must be restricted in order to defeat terrorists" and not immediately be required to resign, the terrorists have already won.

Today, another pair of suspected terrorists were released without charge. This implies that currently there is insufficient evidence to prosecute. Soon we will have Dr Reid telling us that terrorists have been released because the current law prevents the police from finding the necessary evidence and he will renew his attempt to obtain 90 day detention without charge rules that were defeated earlier in the year.

@ Huge

>the "liquid explosive" terrorists have succeeded perfectly
>without getting on a single aircraft or detonating a single bomb.

The saddest thing about it all is that the "liquid explosive" terrorists did it by ruining the lives 23+ innocent people, by arresting them on false charges.

There's a two month old baby whose single mom will be forever hindered in her attempts to find work and provide for her child

@derf

"Why escort a passenger plane with fighter jets? What can they do? If the passenger plane blows up, will they finish the job or just look on helplessly? What a waste!"

The reason is to try and prevent the aircraft getting over populated or other high value areas, and as a tactic it is quite sensible.

Since 9/11 an aircraft is effectivly written off when a terorist alert is raised about it, the authorities switch to damage limitation mode. If the aircraft tries to fly into an excluded area then it is shot down, likewise if it disobays orders given by the pilots of the fighter aircraft it is likley to recieve the same fate.

The secondary reason for the fighter planes is to check if the aircraft has had an unfortunate accident like loss of cabin presure and crew etc. What they are expected to do (except observe/shoot down) under this eventuality I am not sure.

There's no doubt that a lot of political hay is being generated from the endless focus on terror, potential terror plots, terror alerts and the like. Here's another article that, like yours, has an interesting take on the whole issue:

http://www.islamfrominside.com/Pages/Commentary/Rules%20of%20misdirection.html

For those of you who live in the UK especially in or around London and are old enough to remember PIRA attacks whilst Maggie Thatcher was in power.

You may remember the odd way things where reported. When damage from the bombs etc was restricted to property not peoples lives then there was a reasonable amount of press coverage.

However when life was lost the press and newspapers played it down with limited amounts of information.

For a while PIRA appeared to resopond to this and limited it's attacks to things like railway signals etc. Although this created mayhem, and caused considerable disruption to peoples lives, they where atleast still alive to complain about it.

A number of people have claimed that this was a deliberate policy of "educating terorists". I have no evidence one way or the other but it might well be a sensible stratagie to follow (it has also been said that Bill Clinton followed a similar philosphy).

I propose that whenever there is one of these scares, on every route, each airline should offer a special once per month, "extra-safe" flight. For that flight only, all passengers would be searched in depth, all luggage would be examined exhaustively, and all personal items would be banished to the cargo hold or simply be discarded. Depending on the details of the current news situation, additional preventative procedures could be imposed. And of course, only the people who sign up will bear the costs of this new service. The people on the safe flights can be interviewed ad nauseum by the media - expressing their willingness to undergo extra expense, personal indignity and inconvenience to remain safe. The rest of us can continue to fly the same way we used to. My guess is that no one will go on these flights. But if any do, it is probably best to separate them from sane people anyway.

Fantastic essay, Bruce.

This should be required reading for everyone in the U.S. A link to this essay has now shown up on a number of blogs. It should be promoted in any way possible - this is truly the best summary of current events I've ever read.

When I have bad dreams about being unable to protect my family against harm I do not dream of the terrorists.

I dream about the US authorities. "Anti-terrorism" men who have mistaken me for a terrorist. They break down my door in the middle of the night, hurt my family, kidnapp me, and "disappear" me to someplace like Guantanamo Bay where I will never be seen or heard from again.

I'm seriously thinking about leaving this country and returning home to Canada. Even though I am here legally and am not a Muslim.

It's sad, since I love the ideal that America is supposed to represent. :-(

The kind of surveillance that foiled the terror plot in Britain is not legal in the US, and there is much screaming whenever we try to even come close.

You want it all.

"The USA may have won the Cold War by bankrupting the Soviet Union."

Ha ha, you're kidding right?

The Soviet Union was bankrupt because socialism doesn't work (capital is consumed, not invested).

The US too will be bankrupt, but it won't be because of the 'terrorism', but because of the socialism.

I agree. And the same rules should be heard for the fear mongers, who cry racism. The evironmentalists who continually try to scare us with there doom and gloom and of course big government who stea our money away from us, becasue if we don't society will to hell.

Has anyone asked the terrorists what they want? I see far more speculation than source material...

I think it's high time for an open letter to be written to the politicians. Seriously, are there any of them that actually listen to anything 'we' (and by we, I mean the scurity community who actually knows that we're talking about) have to say otherwise. I know I have personally written my Senator many times about other topics as well (such as Internet regulation) and just get canned responses. But if a single open letter goes out and gets good media penetration, maybe somebody would finally notice. Ok time to leave fantasy land and get back to working for the man...

Stand in front of an elephant and describe what you see.

Now stand behind the same elephant and describe it.

These two descriptions are not entirely compatible, yet they are both correct.

The differences are not those of the elephant itself (same elephant, right?) nor the perceiver (same you, right?); they are differences of perspective, or points of view.

I agree with this post in the context of its point of view. I also agree that there is a rational basis for an increase in wariness.

To say that when terror-related aggression increases that we must jettison our heightened awareness of safety (self-preservation at work here) for the sake of some national pride seems very one-sided to me (indicative of the "only one point of view" mindset).

I'm not saying we should OVER-react to the threat but neither do I advocate UNDER-responding to it.

There is (or ought to be) a balance in this area and I'm not sure that we, as a nation, have found it just yet.

It seems so easy to second guess those passengers.

I wasn't ther, but I know that I wil do everything I can to defend my life and my family. If that includes overreacting then so be it.

In any system in absence of complete information, there will be false positives and false negatives.

On vacation this past several days, we had two search incidents - one airplane & one at the Liberty Bell of my wife's purse.

First, the three of us are me (59 yr. old size 40 white blue eyed brownish hair cargoshorted sandaled) my wife (mid 50s greying haired curvacious white Jr. League type) & our son (15, blue eyed long blond wavy haired studlier than he realizes beach boy.)

Now, at the Liberty Bell, something in my wife's knapsack purse looked unfamiliar to the barely out of her teens black girl running the scanner. Seems she had never seen a barrette hair clip on the xray before. So the middle aged white security guy comes over to paw through her purse. He probably had seen one before, but it never occurred to him that the barrette was what the scanner girl was seeing. So we spent ten minutes standing there (backing up the line) while this played out. What was lacking here was judgement - not on the part of the scanner girl, who merely made the first cut, but of the security guy, who should have taken one look at us & waved us through, after a quick look at the purse for form's sake.

Later, getting on to the plane, I put my eyedrops out of my pocket into the scanner container, & another barely out of her teens girl picked it out & said No to it because the label was worn off. I told her it was eye drops & offered to put some in my eyes. But hey, that's too sensible. Meanwhile, the exact same kind of drops, in the precise size, was in my wife's purse & went right through the scanner without a hitch. Same purse & contents, BTW, that was a problem at the Liberty Bell.

Bottom line is that no one seems to be empowered to make decisions - the rules about what can go through are necessarily extreme, because the people doing the first cut shouldn't have to do anything more than make a first take on what ought to be looked at. That cut should err on the side of caution.

But once someone has been selected out, second line people with some judgment should be in a position to make reasonable decisions about things.

What seems to be happening is that the second line people have no more leeway to make judgments than the first line scanners.

I will not let the terrorists scare me off of the airplanes. But the pettyfogging indiscriminant searching is driving me nuts.

It's not the fear, it's the 99 percent unnecessary inconvenience. This might be why the terrorists have not simply sent bombs through with the baggage. If they did that, we'd screen all the baggage, & that would take care of that. But what they are doing now throws sand into the air transportation system, and has the potential of actually shutting the system down - and driving passengers away.

A great article, people just need to slow down and take a breath before tripping out.

found this article from a link on Instapundit... and after reading it, and most of the comments, I'm so happy to see that there are some "sane" people left in this country. One thing many people forget is that the terrorists are real people... with real mothers and fathers... and real thoughts and feelings. There's a deep psychological imbalance that convinces them that blowing up thousands of innocent people (and themselves) is acceptable. Sure, there's a religious aspect, but human instinct is based on survival and 99% of the people in the world would NOT give up their lives on purpose. To overcome that basic notion is huge.

Make no mistake, these suicide bombers are merely pawns in a greater war. Those terrorists is power do have defined goals for this war (which we may not be 100% aware of), and none of THEM want to be killed. And sadly, their terrorist tactics ARE working. People are overreacting on airplanes.... Americans are willingly giving up their Constitutional rights... it's become acceptable to question another American's patriotism over a disagreement in policy... and the politcal "left" and "right" are more divided and polarized than in anytime in recent history (possibly since the US Civil War).

I really hope the kind of level-headed sanity demonstrated in this post can have a ripple effect through the country.

In my mind, the number one terrorist organization in the United States today is the TSA. It is probably more responsible for creating Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt than any other terrorist organization.

We give the terrorist FAR more credit than they ever should deserve.

They are Not that bright. They plan for 5 years for one 'threat' that may or may not actually work. Heck, give any 5th grader a similar task and they would figure out how to do it in just a few days.

As horrible as 9/11 was... it was only 1/5 successful and that's not because we foiled their plans but because their plans didn't work properly.

The media needs to stop giving them credit and stop holding our soldiers back from catching and killing them.

We didn't lose Vietnam because of our soldier's ability - we lost it because of the media and politics. We're going to lose the war on terror for the same reason.

Stop giving our soldiers political boundaries - let the soldiers do their job and Fight. Let them win this war.

(And be sure to support the coming wave of civilian space exploration so we can get off this rock.)

Another little humorous item, along the lines of the "Underwear Bomber", that's been making the rounds on various UseNet newsgroups that, sad to say, I had to share with you all:

Paris (AP) - French secret police today foiled an attempted bombing using materials that appeared like ordinary fabrics, disguised as clothing, fashioned into lethel explosives. Cottons, polyesters, and the like," reported the constable. "They just wore them. Looked like ordinary shirts and dresses from a strip mall."

The response has been swift. Havoc at airports multiplied as passengers were instructed that all forms of apparel, including undergarments, are no longer permitted in passenger compartments. (Possible exceptions may apply for Victoria's secret-style lingerie, but only where sufficiently sexy).

Americans have responded resoundingly by sounding a Ruby-red alert. "Like the ruby-red slippers in 'The Wizard of Oz,' explained the spokesperson for the TSA. "This is just what the Republicans need for the election. People always vote Republican when they're confused. Fear is their best friend." It was unclear whether officials at the TSA are aware that 'The Wizard of Oz' is only a movie, and not real life, though on the topic of inability to distinguish fantasy from reality, it seemed like a small point.

Passenger responses were mixed. "I was certain my 12-year-old niece was wearing padding," said Bertha Weinerschnitzel from Minnesota, "And now I have absolute proof. I mean, really!"

> Is it not perhaps a tad presumptious to speak on behalf of terrorists?

Saying that "they hate our freedom" seems more presumptuous than saying that their goal is to terrorize people.

> There's little to be gained by us being afraid.

That's an odd thing to say, IMO. If they want us to change our policies, making ordinary citizens afraid of the consequences of failing to change those policies seems pretty logical. And if their goal is to draw us into a "clash of civilizations," as I believe bin Laden himself intimated, then I'd say overreaction on our part plays into their hands.

> The fear of terrorism is very real and very rational

Each of us is much more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than a terrorist. Obviously, we need police checkpoints at every freeway onramp, and many more random checkpoints throughout our cities and towns.

Medical emergencies are also a more realistic threat for Americans than terrorism. I'd love to see the same reformist zeal that's currently being applied to air travel applied to public health infrastructure, emergency rooms, and general healthcare...it'd prevent far more premature deaths.

No matter what kills you, you're just as dead.

Apart from creating terror, they wish to desensitize us so that we are set up for the kill. For every 10 or 100 incidents in which Muslims deliberately act to arouse suspicion—this is an actual tactic of theirs based on testimony given at a mosque in the south, and the testimony of the terrorizing tactic was approved by the imam as being just as much jihad as killing us—there will be an incident that we cannot afford to dismiss. The thing is, as they continue to play terror games, people become fatigued, businesses lose money, and we either give up on watching them so they can kill us at will, or we demand that they all fly together on Al Jihad Airlines.

> Is it not perhaps a tad presumptious to speak on behalf of terrorists?

Saying that "they hate our freedom" seems more presumptuous than saying that their goal is to terrorize people.

> There's little to be gained by us being afraid.

That's an odd thing to say, IMO. If they want us to change our policies, making ordinary citizens afraid of the consequences of failing to change those policies seems pretty logical. And if their goal is to draw us into a "clash of civilizations," as I believe bin Laden himself intimated, then I'd say overreaction on our part plays into their hands.

> The fear of terrorism is very real and very rational

Each of us is much more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than a terrorist. Obviously, we need police checkpoints at every freeway onramp, and many more random checkpoints throughout our cities and towns.

Medical emergencies are also a more realistic threat for Americans than terrorism. I'd love to see the same reformist zeal that's currently being applied to air travel applied to public health infrastructure, emergency rooms, and general healthcare...it'd prevent far more premature deaths.

No matter what kills you, you're just as dead.

Hi Bruce,
I have been reading your articles for years now. This one hits the nail right on the head as usual and makes a great point. I think the B Franklin qoute reflects this thought perfectly:

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.

Thanks for the great insights- keep them coming!

Maybe you can comment on how the media and government keep on calling this a time of war, yet I seem to recall something in the constitution about congress being the only body that had the
power to declare war (which they have not done, to my knowledge).

@ Just Sayin:

Funny you should say that. As I understand it, British investigators actually obtained warrants for their surveillance, and the US investigators were working within the FISA framework. So the fact that a plot was allegedly broken up actually shows that surveillance that's already allowed under current laws is sufficient for breaking up terrorist plots, and there's no excuse for the kind of illegal surveillance (see Judge Taylor's recent ruling) the Bush administration is pushing for.

Wasn't it Robert Heinlein that remarked:

"You can have freedom or you can have security. You can't have both."

I think Larry Niven had some fun turning that into an equation...

"Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare"

The problem is, that's never going to happen so long as the politicians think that this type of high-profile 'action' will get them re-elected (and are proved correct).

"And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want."

Um, no, we aren't.

We are REACTING to their methods by changing our strategic thinking.

What the terorists want is for all of us to BE MUSLIMS. Failing that, to kill us.

That's it. That's all they want.

Sharia law worldwide. Death to homosexuals by stoning, burquas for all females, and madrassas for all children.

Since we're never ever gonna BE MUSLIMS, then the only other option they see for us is DEATH.

So, the way to fight back is to try to avoid death, by doing reasonable things such as checking people more carefully when they board airplanes. Annoying? Yes, but then again, the Islamofascist muslims aren't trying to annoy us, they're trying to KILL us.

If the most they can accomplish is annoying us, then, in fact, we have won and they have lost.

I travel A LOT. What I see a lot of is people getting pissed off at Muslims and refusing to befriend them, or interact with them. Certainly they aren't gonna HIRE them, or socialize with them or sympathize with them. People are now beginning to refuse to fly with them, and this is ONLY THE BEGINNING for the Muslims.

Soon, all Muslims will be outcasts, unemployable and friendless outside their Mosques. Who wants to work next to a guy whose religion commands him to KILL people? Why, he could be perfectly normal at work one moment - and then come back from daily prayers where his Imam issued a new fatwa commanding the faithful to slaughter his co-workers.

Farfetched? Is it really?

The only ones being defeated by terrorism are the Muslims. They'll be escorted out of our societies soon because people will eventually come to the conclusion that they are members of an unpredictable death cult who cannot be trusted.

And so, they will have lost.

@Just Sayin:

It is in fact false that "The kind of surveillance that foiled the terror plot in Britain is not legal in the US, and there is much screaming whenever we try to even come close."

The kind of electronic surveillance against specific suspects employed by the UK against the alleged bombers is perfectly legal in the US, and is in fact what the FISA statute is all about. This is the sort of warrant that the FISA court approves in a heartbeat, that court being more in the nature of a rubber stamp than a gatekeeper.

What is not legal is wholesale untargeted sifting through all domestic communications, as enabled by the ATT feed of interstate phone comms to NSA. There is no court supervision of any kind, and in effect it makes a potential suspect of everyone who makes a long-distance call.

The Bush administration has gone out of its way to confuse the issues, so that the London investigation appears makes the case for their illegal bulk wiretapping. But people who wish to think clearly about this stuff should learn to keep the two separate. We don't "want it all", we just don't want to get administered a polygraph every time we make a phone call.

@no1 and @quincunx

Irrelevant personal jibes aside, you should do research before speaking. You've assumed a definition of "anarchist" that implies a subscriber to "anarchism" instead of the broader definition that includes anyone who seeks to spread/cause anarchy.

The purpose of these so-called terrorists is to undermine governments and the structures of society. They use violence as a means to create chaos. People who pursue this kind of agenda are, by definition, anarchists, even if they do not subscribe to the philosophical view of anarchism.

Some definitions for you to take back to your teachers (note that the philosophical view of anarchism is only exclusive as the 3rd definition of anarchy on either dictionary.com or m-w.com; also note that the 2nd def from m-w.com of anarchist specifically calls out violent actions):

anarchist (from m-w.com)
1 : a person who rebels against any authority, established order, or ruling power
2 : a person who believes in, advocates, or promotes anarchism or anarchy; especially : one who uses violent means to overthrow the established order

an‧ar‧chist (from dictionary.com)
1. a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.
2. a person who seeks to overturn by violence all constituted forms and institutions of society and government, with no purpose of establishing any other system of order in the place of that destroyed.
3. a person who promotes disorder or excites revolt against any established rule, law, or custom.

an‧ar‧chy (from dictionary.com)
1. a state of society without government or law.
2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy.
3. a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.
4. confusion; chaos; disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith.

an·ar·chy (from m-w.com)
1 a : absence of government b : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority c : a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government
2 a : absence or denial of any authority or established order b : absence of order : DISORDER
3 : ANARCHISM

@rightnumberone:
I will quote you from your own blog:

"it's often better to keep ones mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt"

I hope the terrorists keep on using people with dark skin, squinty eyes and wearing turbans to accomplish their dastardly goals. I would hate it if they started using people who look like me, and all of a sudden whites started getting shot at by air marshalls or taken to jail for praying in airplanes or fiddling with their cell phones in flight.

Given all the incidents and their corresponding disproportionate impacts cited in Bruce's article, I think I have a really good strategy for terrorist organizations: stop committing actual terrorism, and just create a series of ultimately harmless disturbances that have nearly the same effect as an act of terrorism.

Here's an example: instead of blowing up a plane in flight, just get a dozen or so people of obvious south Asian ethnic appearance to board a flight and "act suspicious." Or, hire an actress to feign claustrophobia and mental instability on a transatlantic flight. Or, pay a couple ethnic Arabs to wear odd clothes, speak Arabic in whispered tones, and fidget nervously before boarding their flight.

The result is world-wide headlines and a major disruption in airline operations, with the added benefit of putting yet another dent in the confidence level and economies of Westernized societies.

Ultimately harmless acts have nearly the same effect as a terrorist act, but with much less risk of reprisal. In fact, investigators would probably never suspect such things as being initiated by a terrorist organization. They'd probably get as far as interviewing the "actors" and when they hear a story about claustrophobia, cell phone re-sale schemes, or just language-related misunderstandings, they'll drop the case & go back to looking for explosives in toothpaste.

Brilliant. Absolutely Brilliant. You GET it.

As Ben Franklin is often quoted: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

I not only agree with your thesis in "Refuse to be Terrorized", I actually go further. I believe that every single incident you list in your piece is another example of the various governments handing the terrorists a victory.

I am not a chemist and my chemistry knowledge ends with high school chemistry. I did not take chemistry in college. Yet, with my basic
chemistry knowledge, and plain common sense, I immediately saw numerous holes and contradictions in what the British and American
governments were telling us about the recent "scare" in Great Britain. For starters, highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide is simply not available "over the counter." And of course, one cannot get to 10 or 16 in multiples of three, yet that is what these governments were claiming (The planes would be attacked in groups of
three, and, depending on who you asked, 10 or 16 planes were going to be involved.)

@Tired Ben

No wonder you're tired. Perhaps the solution is to privatize anarchy. Or socialize terrorism.

Actually, most of the world's Muslims are not Arab, but Asian and East Asian. As David Warren, who was raised in Pakistan, has pointed out, the "center of gravity" of the world's Muslim population is east of Kabul. Malaysia alone has more Muslims than all the Arab countries combined.

Thank you. I'm all for security, but when baby formula, basic toiletries and cell phones start being banned from flights, I get nervous about our security infrastructure as a whole.

It reminds me of those kids in the nineties who were being expelled from elementary schools for bringing "weapons" (microscopic plastic "guns" for their GI-Joe action figures) to school. There's a fine line between common sense and stupidity... and we're no way near it anymore.

Nonsense.

... Or maybe Al Quaeda's cave-dwelling alchemists have trumped every major military lab in the world to create a proprietray blend of lime-flavored explosives out of Gatorade.

It's embarrassing.

Clive: you write "The result was that Turkey invaded Northan Cyprus which they occupied to an extent in percentage terms to that of the Turkish population."

This is incorrect; at the time of the Turkish invasion, about 18% of Cyprus's population were Turks, but they wound up with 37% of the territory. Since then, some Turks have moved to Cyprus from the Turkish mainland, and the question of just how many they are is disputed, but there's no question that your claim is not correct.

Thank you, Bruce. I will be sharing this with anyone who will listen.

The comments about a binary explosive not working are not accurate. Read this letter from John Carmack (both of Id software and Armadillo Aerospace), on his first-hand experience with such chemicals.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail428.html#Carmack

So there is a risk. The question is how much mitigation is appropriate - or possible.

Tired Ben,

Why does the word 'liberal' not mean the same thing it meant a hundred years ago? It used to mean almost-anarchist.

'Irrelevant personal jibes aside, you should do research before speaking. You've assumed a definition of "anarchist" that implies a subscriber to "anarchism" instead of the broader definition that includes anyone who seeks to spread/cause anarchy.'

So in other words if you jumble together popular opinions of what anarchy is, you can get a good objective understanding of it.

Now I get the way you think: put things to a vote and let the zeitgeist decide the meanings.

The problem with kind of analysis is that it doesn't hold with the other things I've said:

Where the American Revolutionaries, terrorists?

Wouldn't that make the great political killers (see list above) anarchists?

Can you understand what's wrong with your methodology?

'The purpose of these so-called terrorists is to undermine governments and the structures of society. They use violence as a means to create chaos. People who pursue this kind of agenda are, by definition, anarchists, even if they do not subscribe to the philosophical view of anarchism.'

You've made the fundamental political error of equating government with society. The government, or the State, is not society, it's an exploitative institution built on keeping the gun under the table.

---

I will make this clear again: You can not be a violent anarchist, because it's anti-thetical. What you are attempting to do is akin to calling a serial killer, a pacifist, and then claiming that pacifists are anti-social.

The attempt is to hijack a word. For example, Social Security and Ponzi Scheme are exactly the same thing, but you'll never hear it called the latter.

Conscription and Involuntary Servitude (slavery) are the same thing, but you'll never hear the latter.

--

@non-quincunx

"No wonder you're tired. Perhaps the solution is to privatize anarchy. Or socialize terrorism."

Why try? It's already done! That is exactly how it works.

Government = Socialized terrorism
Private Anarchy = Charity, Free-Market exchange, International Law, Black Markets, etc...

Fantastic post. The public's ability to recognize and reject a government's conspiracy of fear-based policy is the surest sign of individual freedom.

@Oliver:

"Thank you. I'm all for security, but when baby formula, basic toiletries and cell phones start being banned from flights, I get nervous about our security infrastructure as a whole."

Weren't cell-phones in the hands of the passengers what kept Flight 93 from reaching a more sensitive target?

Perhaps treating people more as citizens rather than subjects and expecing a majority to "deal with a problem" might be more helpful? Issue Bowie knives to every adult passenger?

All right, so that goes a bit far on the other side, but it sure keeps the passengers from feeling like victims.

Thank you for the great post. You concisely sum up many of my ideas on the nature of our response to the terrorism threat and it is refreshing to see the media actually printing an article that isn't a "sky-is-falling" fear-based article.

Recently as the hysteria gets whipped up more and more by the media and our government, I have started to wonder whether this seemingly misguided response to terrorism isn't actually on purpose. There is a lot of scientific evidence that anxiety and insecurity are strong control tools as well as strong motivators to shop. Since we live in a consumer-driven economy, is it possible that the "war on terrorism" with its constant press coverage, color-coded threat levels, and "security" measures are all designed to be a motivating factor to drive our economy? Could fear be the flame under the cauldron of our economy?

"The point of terrorism is to cause terror"

Wrong. The point of terrorism is to cause us to give the terrorists what they want because we're terrified and we think that if we give terrorists what they want, the terrorists will leave us alone.

Big difference.

In one case, you think that you can defeat these monsters by swaggering your way through an airport security line.

In the other case, you realize that you have no alternative but to kill these blighters... every one of them.

Hope you see the difference.

'Since we live in a consumer-driven economy, is it possible that the "war on terrorism" with its constant press coverage, color-coded threat levels, and "security" measures are all designed to be a motivating factor to drive our economy?'

How could a fiat dollar expansion and a $1billion dollar a day deficit be good for the economy?

It's can't, but what it can be is a great boost to certain segments of the economy: military-industrial complex, and the sub-contractors of those, and all the indirect factors of production that are imputed from 'war' demand.

The US economy is going to take a huge nose dive in the not to distant future, expect the government to come up with price controls, rationing schemes, and basically more fascism.
The question is, who will be our next Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot? Any guesses?

Thank you so very much. This article needs to be copied verbatim into every paper in the world.

You might like this post I put up a while ago... I think it speaks to the heart of why we are so motivated to crush terror at all costs, and why we are so easily manipulated by fear.

http://allpork.blogspot.com/2006/05/insanity-of-bereaved.html

Again, thank you!

-Ian

I wish with all my heart that this silly, delusional, head-up-the-*** "our government is the real problem" groupthink circle-jerk were right. That is not the case. You people have no idea the threats that we face. No idea. When New York dissappears or when the entire West coast is thrown into total chaos via an emp device, and not 10, but 100 airplanes fall out of the sky, perhaps you will.

@Tired Ben:

Lookup Kropotkin, almost the inventor of the term "Anarchy"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchists

Brilliant. Whenever I get frustrated with my family or whoever is watching too much TV (which guarantees ad revenue by scaring people into watching), I'll just refer them to this essay. Thanks for saying everything that's in my head and backing it all up.

@Fugate:

"I wish with all my heart that this silly, delusional, head-up-the-*** "our government is the real problem" groupthink circle-jerk were right. That is not the case. You people have no idea the threats that we face. No idea. When New York dissappears or when the entire West coast is thrown into total chaos via an emp device, and not 10, but 100 airplanes fall out of the sky, perhaps you will."

But...how is banning hand cream, or carry-on luggage, or Muslim students going to prevent that? What we will need if something like those things happens is a robust disaster preparedness plan, not a vat of shampoo that couldn't be carried onto a plane.

Sure, there are threats. The problem is that demonizing deoderant really isn't going to do much about them.

Bob: "While I feel your comments are correct with respect to the political goals of the terrorist, I think that they downplay the hatred our policies have created in some persons. People do not blow themselves up our of a desire to disrupt someone elses life, they do it because something has kindled a hatred that make them want to destroy us."

Liberals believe that hatred was kindled by America, just as America has kindled their hatred. Conservatives believe that Islamist hatred was kindled by Islam. The conservative view is grounded in history and is well documented while the liberal view is grounded in fantasy and treason.

Islam is a religion of hate which propagates a doctrine of hating and destroying non-Muslims. It has made war on non-Muslims most of its history until it was too feeble to do so in the 1600s. It's will to make war in service of religious imperialism has been revived by petrodollars, courtesy of the very infidels it hates and seeks to enslave or destroy.

The answer does not lie in tweaking our defenses in airports but rather in taking the war to the doorsteps of the Islamists. That means ending the sanctuary for terror in Saudi Arabia, which finances two thirds of Islamic terror and actively propagates the most vile form of bloody Islam.

The weakest point of the Islamic jihad is its finances. Sever the connection between the oil fields in eastern Saudi Arabia and the Wahhabi clergy and most of the terror campaign will whither on the vine.

In other words, Saudi Arabia must cease to exist.

Tantor

@Tantor

In practice most religions are religions of hate, in that they practice 'us' and 'everybody else'. Even those that express good will towards 'everbody else', they're still not 'us' and they would be better off if they were 'us'.

I doubt if many people who 'know' why terrorists hate us have ever actually considered what the terrorist says.

I agree with some commenters here that the old trope about "the point of terrorism is to cause terror" is a bit outdated.

Recent history has shown that Islamic militants are fixated specifically on blowing airplanes up. There are many easier and more effective ways to cause "terror", but that doesn't seem to be what these guys want. They want to express that they have "power", and are a force to be reckoned with.

Samuel Huntington put it best: "...a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power." This is about power, and commenter Chris' idea about terror-lite isn't going to happen--it's too subtle for these guys. They need to blow stuff up to be satisfied.

I don't experience terror. Don't feel it. Never have. I do, however, experience a great deal of ANNOYANCE. Pure and simple annoyance with every single aspect of flying settled in long before suicide bombers ever became fashionable. Flyi