I want to post a portion of an email I received from Dario, which points to one of the preferred talking points being trotted out of late by the Manichean “we’re the ones who are really tough on terror” / “what are you guys worried about? There’s no such thing as an Islamic threat, you stupid Nascar loving bedwetters!” coalition of anti-war leftists, foreign policy lifers, and bongwater libertarians. And of course stalwart “conservatives” like Andrew Sullivan.
Dario writes:
Elections are coming up and as you know the Democrats really have no position on the WOT except to complain about how the current administration is doing it.
I found this article after going to a link from [Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish].
Among the words of wisdom was this keeper […]:
Even if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity, that would mean your one-year risk would be one in 100,000 and your lifetime risk would be about one in 1300. (300,000,000 ÷ 3,000 = 100,000 ÷ 78 years = 1282) In other words, your risk of dying in a plausible terrorist attack is much lower than your risk of dying in a car accident, by walking across the street, by drowning, in a fire, by falling, or by being murdered.
So do these numbers comfort you? If not, that’s a problem. Already, security measuresâ€â€pervasive ID checkpoints, metal detectors, and phalanxes of security guardsâ€â€increasingly clot the pathways of our public lives.
It seems the latest approach is that, hell it’s no big deal if 3,000 people get killed, look at the statistics! Oddly enough this rationalization isn’t used when discussing the military deaths in Iraq.
Interestingly (well, to me, at least), Ace and I were discussing this very same thing on our last radio show earlier in the week, and both of us—along with Jim Pinkerton—were simply appalled. On its face, the argument seems rather sensible: the idea is that, because the statistical likelihood of your falling victim to a terrorist attack is slim, it is perfectly reasonable to weigh that likelihood against the more likely inconveniences / governmental encroachments brought about by the (potentially hysterical insistence upon) increased security.
What I find most cynical about this argument is that, a) I don’t believe for a second its proponents are serious, and b) it is the kind of argument that trades a sense of national purpose for the luxury of not being at all inconvenienced—all while asserting, if only obliquely, that the ideals we are fighting to protect are negotiable and can be best determined by a cost / benefit analysis that takes no stock in such outmoded intangibles as national unity, doing what we feel is “right,” or doing what—for the purposes of freedom and liberty—really must be done.
Odd, coming from a libertarian publication, that last.
Not only that, but the argument doesn’t take into account that the enemy is looking to increase the scale of the attacks each time out. So with every success, they will look to up the ante, meaning the 3000 number is potentially wishful thinking. Not only that, but returning to a law enforcement paradigm would give the enemy far more space to develop and perfect new methods of attack. So the real question, from the perspective of their argument, should be how many deaths is okay before you believe it okay to change the calculus? 100,000? 500,000? Hell, even 1 million is a fairly small percentage of 300,000,000.
Further, the very idea is based upon the kind of civic selfishness that is anathema to the charitable ways of Americans. As Ace pointed out on the show, his likelihood of contracting HIV, as a heterosexual male whose drugs of choice don’t involve the sharing of a syringe, are very low. So should he begin parading around the statistics in order to convince people to cut funding / charitable giving toward the cure for AIDS?
Should I protest funding for cervical cancer research simply because my chances of contracting it are nil?
The point being, somethings we do because we believe them the right things to do. The fact that most of us will never be killed in—or even directly affected by—a terrorist attack is not an excuse not to fight what we know to be not only dangerous, but morally repugnant.
That some are willing to fall back once again on cynical pragmatism and the rhetorical trick of statistical manipulation to justify and rationalize their anti-war position speaks to just how far they are willing to go to see their own agendas implemented.
But to suggest that you are anti-war because you’ve done some math and “realized” that you have a better chance of dying in a lightning strike than in a terrorist attack, and that you’d rather have your “freedoms” (not to be waved over by a wand or wait in a line at the airport) and take your chances than find yourself ensnared in the growing police state, strikes me as a post hoc rationalization.
If you don’t like the Bush Doctrine or the given tack for fighting terrorism, say so and say why. But to fall back on the canard that we’re in some kind of serious danger of losing our liberties—after five years of war where we’ve been asked little sacrifice—is itself the very kind of scaremongering the anti-war people always accuse the administration of engaging in each time it purports to take the terror threat seriously.
What the administration has going for it is that it is fighting to protect a way of life—not, as some others evidently are, a mere standard of living.
****
related: Speaking of lies, damned lies, and statistics, Glenn Reynolds has an interesting post up that points to difficulties in pointing out trends—particularly when the trends we’re often made privy to seem oftentimes rather pointedly non-random.
Also, via Tom Pechinski, a completed media corruption report on Qana, from Eureferendum.
Sure, I may have a better chance of dying by a lightening strike than in a terrorist attack, but lightening isn’t going around actually trying to kill me. And the terrorists would dearly love to up that annual figure, as you noted, to something well above 3,000/annum.
I had a lunatic shoot my car one night – the shot missed me by about 12 – 18 inches. Since that kind of attack is relatively random, I suppose the police shouldn’t have pursued this guy and the state shouldn’t have shoved him into a mental hospital.
That kind of reasoning is unreason – the grasping at straws of a petulant viewpoint that knows it is losing.
“relatively rare”, I should say.
Reminds me of that scene from the “Time Machine” movie where the happy morons living above ground simply acquiesce to the “morlocks” or something appearing every now and then to claim a couple of them for food or some such. Hey, the numbers favored their not being selected personally so why not play the odds and continue being the happy-go-lucky, toga clad idiot for as long as that gravy train held out? Funny how art imitates Lefty life, huh?
And right there is the call to arms, so to speak, that defines why we fight. Mazeltof!(?)
It’s also the very concept that the moonbats can’t grasp when they talk about national “sacrifice.” They are so wound up in the utopian ideals of civil liberties and redistribution that, at times, it makes the fervor of jihdists look like girl scouts selling cookies. It is possible to recognise the enemy as wanting to destroy a way of life and also recognise that the relatively minor adjustments to our everyday freedoms do not seriously impact our way of life, standard of living or our combined federal ideals.
In other words, let’s win this damn thing. And stop whining.
PS: Are the statistics ghouls also going to be the ones screaming loudest for Bush’s head if, God forbid, a dirty bomb goes off in Chicago and kills 50,000 citizens? Don’t answer, I already know that one.
Sure, I may have a better chance of dying by a lightening strike than in a terrorist attack, but lightening isn’t going around actually trying to kill me.
Don’t be too sure about that, pal.
Now where else in the blogaverse could you find Zeus talkin’ smack about lightening bolts.
I love this place!
Among the things this calculus leaves out are the repercussions of terrorist assaults on our society. I’m not the least bit worried about losing my life to a terrorist, but I worry to no end what American society would be like if there were weekly bombings killing dozens – or (dog forbid) a WMD attack killing tens of thousands.
I’m talking major economic dislocation, extreme reactions by law enforcement and politicians that would make the inconveniences of today’s airport security seem like an afternoon at the spa.
It’s about time these anti-war, anti-Bush progressives got called on their amazing short-sightedness.
Do these statistics mean we can now get rid of drunk driving laws?
In addition to cynicism are the wishful thinking and/or sense of entitlement in the excerpt from Dario, both of which have less traction than ever before.
For technology and immigration have eliminated the geo-strategic shelter the USA previously enjoyed by being located in North America. And since the ideology of militant Islam is supranational, national integrity (within which one would have the luxury of analyzing terrorist threats via “cost/benefit,” as Jeff identifies Dario’s approach itself has to be most vigorously asserted. Western national integrity, first and foremost.
Good catch, Jeff!
God Bless America.
Insert “
” between “approach” and “itself”, above.
Damn straight.
Didn’t see anything about probability and statistics in there. Maybe I’ll just have to look harder or with more nuance.
I realize you’re working in a TW there, equitus, but I afraid calling them on virtually anything is a fool’s errand. The proggs are too invested in the notion that Bush is to be blamed for everything than admit there are existential threats that will be around long after W is out of office.
Indeed.
Let’s say that, God forbid, an Iran/NK/Pakistan nuke gets by our feeble attempts at security and goes off in say somewhere like Houston, Miami, or Baltimore.
Hundreds of thousands dead……
How many mosques would burn that night? How many innocent people would be lynched in the streets? What would an reaction made by an America in an uncontrollable rage be like?
And some groups worry about “backlash” nowadays…..
BDS hits hard.
Thanks AFKAF, your insight is perfect.
I will start using the term “Eloi” when I rant.
No moreso than the assertion of an unproven straight-line projection.
Especially when the year-to-year figures are down.
But my favorite part of the Reason article is that it closes with a quote from FDR, who—by the author’s logic—should have done nothing after Pearl Harbor.
Kelly,
True, it was a bit of a TW reach. By the way, was “everything” your TW? What nuance!
Wtf?! That emoticon is supposed to be… )
If somebody sucessfully blows up a crowded shopping mall, do they think these statistics will impress consumers? Will they be able to convince shoppers they are safer in the malls than the car ride there? Or will they be bitching and moaning about an economy that is truly in the crapper?
How can you not even mention the economic impact of something like 9/11? I know it is considered heartless to consider such things to these pinheads, but it affects the lives of all of us, survivors included.
Equitus adds an important point.
While some consider it upsetting or bloodless or nasty to bring it up, the fact is that terrorism exerts a tremendous economic cost. If skyscrapers aren’t safe, if air travel isn’t safe, then people’s economic lives are disrupted to a huge degree–and you can sneer all you want but making the mortgate payment and feeding the kids are popular passtimes here, I don’t know about your neck of the woods.
If terrorism isn’t fight strenuously, then there will indeed be more and more of it, with an eye toward ever-greater body counts and, just as important, ever-greater disruptions to everyday life.
I’ll never tell…
“Many a statistician has drowned in a very wide river with an average depth of six inches.”
SB: result
Watch them outliers, boys…
Not to beat a dead camel or anything, but physical explosive damage to our infrastructure needn’t be the only means of preemption. Considering the Frontpage Mag story you sited this morning about Iran already possessing nukes via Khazakstan, the prospect of Iran preempting the U.S. in one fell stroke through an EMP attack sounds more plausible.
“A World Without America” – Civil Defense Perspectives Jan 06 (decent overview)
http://www.oism.org/cdp/jan2006.html
Purposeful mid-air test detonations of Iranian missles – This is a good yet fairly technical summary of Iran’s questionable tests of the Shahab 3
missle (see also Bill Gertz)
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iran/missile/shahab-3.htm
(See also Center for Security Policy for a more concise breakdown)
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?section=papers&code=05-D_20
Finally, this recent bellicose Iran statement via MEMRI “The American Regime can expect a resounding slap and devastating first blow from the Muslim Nation”
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP123006
The Iranian missle test purposefully detonated the missle at appogee, or about 630 miles in flight, the optimum parameters for a devastating
line-of-sight EMP attack. One successful untraceable nuke launch from a freighter off the coast of America could send the country instantly back to the 19th century. This has defense and intelligence officials losing sleep. See any
number of Congressional hearings on our vulnerability to EMP attack. Pleasant dreams.
“Not. Fit. To. Govern.” is the phrase that comes to mind when I hear or see something from the “progressives.” We simply must all get everyone out to the polls this November.
1993 WTC Bombing – 6 killed
1996 Khobar Towers – 20 killed
1998 US Embassy Bombing – 220 killed
2001 WTC Attacks – 3000 killed
Mathematically, I see the number of deaths growing by an order of magnitude roughly every three years, which leads me to conclude that the Bush Doctrine has already stopped an attack that would have killed tens of thousands of people. And were I to forecast the likelihood that I’d be killed in a terrorist attack, I’d say that w/o the Bush Doctrine, I’d stand a 100% chance of being dead by 2016.
No thanks, I’ll stick with Bush…
Well, since our lifetime chances of dying from any cause are approximately 1 in 1, I propose that we indulge our inner passions without regard for the consequences to others or to society as a whole. Shoot up at work? Donkey punch that chick I picked up in a bar? Tell my wife the battery went dead? Obey the traffic laws? That’s for chumps, my friend Eddie Haskell tells me. Don’t you dare judge me. Live it up until Carousel—that’s my motto.
TW: Reason – the middle ground between High Times and Oui.
I would find it very, very difficult to see how the Iranians could pull that off. Maybe I rate the USN (and our satellite folks) too highly?
I suspect Iranian missile tests are more, um, Israel (maybe Europe)oriented. If you take my meaning.
I think Jeff was alluding to the basic fallacy of Sullivan’s argument, but let me pare it down. Sullivan’s argument assumes that the odds of dying in a terrorist attack would not change even if we did nothing to prevent it. Who’s ready to test that assumption? Perhaps Andrew would like to start flying only on airlines that don’t check ID’s and search passangers? If not, I’ll consider him to be a chickenactuary.
Someone in our local papers forum brought this article up – here was my reply:
Of course the topic quickly changed to the issue of duct tape (the use of which I calmly explained after I was told “I had to admit was a foolish suggestion” – I even managed to point out that had people gotten their duct tape and hot listened to Harry Reid and the left they probably would have had food and water when Katrina struck) and the topic was rather quickly dropped.
DKK
Consider the following gedankenexperiment:
Let’s assume that your chances of being killed in a terrorist incident are roughly one in a million in any given year.
Let’s imagine that Osama bin Laden simply asked for 300 Americans a year, to be beheaded. And in exchange, he guaranteed that there would be no al-Qaeda attacks on the US proper (fifty states, plus DC). And let’s, for the sake of this argument, assume he’s actually credible/sincere.
By the logic exhibited by this progressive argument, a lottery for picking 300 Americans at random would be far preferable to spending some billions of dollars on airport security, port security, etc. And, given much of the rhetoric, it would be fairer, since rich and poor, black and white, red state and blue stater would all be participating.
I didn’t mean untraceable in the ballistic sense, Major John, but in the fissile signature sense.
The Reason argument is ridiculous for all the reasons posted above. Equitus hits a point often overlooked. And as many have suggested, actions almost always have unintended, and hence, unpredictable consequences.
Here’s a thought experiment. Did the 9/11 murderers set their grisly sights on only 3000 vicitms. It has been compellingly argued that a delay of a few minutes might have increased the death toll by an order of magnitude. Or what if one or both of the planes simply missed and crashed into another part of Manhattan? Did we get off lucky?
Who the hell knows, but I an assert categorically that it’s unacceptable for sociopaths to fly airliners into skyscrapers in major metropolitan areas.
But that’s just me.
Time to restock the bunker and buy a tank. Damn, and I just cleaned it out yesterday
I will repeat another dire repercussion would be on civil rights.
I’m reminded of the faux-controversy Peter Kirsanow kicked up soon after he was appointed to the Civil Rights Commission.
http://tinyurl.com/kffj6
Of course the damn-fool Democrats took that as a threat, but it was really intended as a warning.
Is one enough? Is two too many? The problem is that when you rationalize one life as acceptable, then you have surrendered to the life takers. Whose life is it acceptable to concede?
Our problem has been that we have not pursued with the necessary vigor the life takers of the past. While the life of the victim of the traffic accident is tragic, it happens to be somewhat acceptable in the risk/reward ratio. The single life snuffed out by an enemy of the state is never an acceptable risk.
Be it one life or one hundred thousand lives, what is important to the equation is the way the life was taken.
Had this country had the fortitude to pursue and eradicate this vermin years ago, we wouldn’t be concerned today with the problem.
I’m sure Eric Rudolph is kicking himself right now, in that he didn’t bring up this argument in his defense.
After all, how many people actually go into an abortion clinic each day, where they could get killed by a bomb? How many people went to the Atlanta Olympics and didn’t get blown up?
(Seriously, since major metropolitan areas are the obvious targets of terrorists, and the majority of these areas are in blue states, do these amateur statisticians really want red staters to think, “You know what, it ain’t going to be my ass getting nuked. Kiss my NASCAR-watching ass, New York.”)
Lurking Observer
A Taste of Armageddon
Darleen:
Busted!
I was, in fact, partly thinking of precisely that episode when I wrote my comment. But I was also thinking that there’s a scary fraction of the population that, like the folks on Eminiar and Vendikar, would prefer the “no fuss, no muss” approach.
LifeTrek
I’m not amazed that we don’t pay particular attention to the number of highway deaths annually
Accidents are tragic and if we were to worry about each and everyone, we might never leave the house, least we die in traffic, or back yard pools, or tripping down staircases …
This is entirely different than being at risk from people who deliberately target you for crime. THOSE stats we pay more attention to … muggings, rape, murder. And we also pay attention when “accidents” happen more than what we consider “normal.”
Pick an airline and see what happens if one of its fleet drops out of the sky killing a couple of hundred people each quarter …
LO
Oh, I agree! The will to “appease” by any means necessary (and let us superior and enlightened proggs get back to the business of telling you all how to live) is pretty apparent.
This from Karl
Which begs the conumdrum. Why on earth, when we, the US, was viciously attacked on Dec. 7 1941 by the Japanese, did FDR send troops to invade the peace loving Algerians who had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. Still waiting for Actus to field that one.
Darleen:
The funny thing is, I think the folks who enunciate this line of thinking believe, at the end of the day, that they’re not in the cross-hairs.
If terrorism is simply a random event that strikes down a few hundred (or even a few thousand) people, it’s not something that need be defended against.
At the same time, though, it’s something that you can avoid, if you just do a few smart things. Like avoiding lightning by not standing under trees during thunderstorms, I wonder if these folks aren’t somehow thinking they’ll avoid it b/c, well, they’re smarter, or they’re not pro-Zionist, or somesuch?
Remember Michael Moore’s cri de coeur after September 11? “How could you do this to us? We didn’t even vote for Dubya?! Why didn’t you got after red-staters, who deserve it?!” I think underneath the “it’s statistically improbable” argument is a “and in a just world, it’ll happen to those who deserve it” mentality.
And, what many of these people don’t realize is that, living in urban areas, working in knowledge industries that affect the lives of millions of people worldwide, espousing the right to gay marriage, the right for women to be treated as equals, the right even not to worship any God at all, they are the very people that a bin Laden would most want to kill.
My chances of contracting cervical cancer are equally nil. OTOH, I lost a loved one to it…
The points about al Quaeda’s interest in escalating their death tolls are well-taken. However, I think some of this critique is off the mark.
How so? Assuming the law enforcement paradigm was a vigorous and aggressive one, why would terrorists be freer to operate under the law enforcement paradigm than the war paradigm?
This analogy seems inapt. The terrorism article assumes that risks of terrorism are equally spread throughout the population, and argues that the aggregate costs of terrorism prevention outweigh the aggregate benefits. Ace’s argument, by contrast, chooses one person with a particularly low risk of HIV infection. If everyone throughout the population had the same risk of HIV infection that Ace does, then it would in fact make sense to move scarce public resources away from fighting AIDS.
This seems to mischaracterize the article. I don’t think the author is saying not to fight terrorism at all. The question is whether the marginal costs of increased security measures are justified by the marginal benefits to public safety.
I also don’t see where moral repugnance fits in. There are many practices that are morally repugnant and, in a perfect world, we could put an end to them. But we don’t because we don’t feel that doing so is worth the cost. What distinguishes al Quaeda-ism from, say, female genital mutiliation or tyranny in Uzbekistan is that the former is a direct threat to our physical well-being, while the latter are not.
Josh
The vast majority of American population is not at risk to contract HIV. The degree of difference at exposure to HIV vs exposure to terrorism is quite small.
This doesn’t negate the seriousness of confronting either.
Sure would be embarassing if the gadget failed to detonate, wouldn’t it? Are the Mighty Mullahs sure their modeling/simulation software isn’t lying to them just a teeny bit? Since they really can’t do a live test, y’know…
SB: attack
the best defense…
Josh:
Are you suggesting that military ROEs are as restrictive as police/law enforcement agency ROEs?
Consider the following:
How does one receive tips about a possible terrorist activity? Military intelligence freely grants the idea of eavesdropping on communications. Police/LEA intelligence does not. Which is more likely to generate useable or actionable intelligence?
Once tips are received, how does one respond? In most police situations, use of deadly force is highly restricted. Simply drawing a weapon can generate enormous paperwork and second-guessing. When pursuing a group in the hills of Afghanistan (or in the suburbs of Beirut), which is more likely to be effective?
(For a more object lesson, consider the fate of many Russian MVD units, essentially super-SWAT teams, sent into Groznyy. SWAT forces may equip like military units, but they are not military forces, and confronted with a militarized set of bad guys, are likely to get shwacked.)
Once the bad guys are neutralized, what happens to them? In a police situation, remember that apprehension, not deadly force, is the aim—and the purpose is to put them on trial. So, the focus is collecting evidence. Not quite the same thing as a military situation, where the aim is to collect intelligence, so chain-of-custody, making sure you don’t leave fingerprints, etc., are simply not matters of concern.
Finally, mistreat a prisoner in a police situation, even one who is kicking, biting, or trying to stab you, and the presumption is that the LEOs are at fault. (Certainly, the defendant’s lawyers will use it at trial.) Try to stab a military guard, and you’re dead. Given the behavior of some of these people, which seems more appropriate?
mojo:
A gun-type atomic weapon does not need to be tested.
South Africa developed a nuclear deterrent without any testing, by relying on explosively uniting two sub-critical enriched uranium halves.
The US never tested the Hiroshima bomb. The July 16 test at Alamogordo was a plutonium implosion bomb, similar to what we dropped on Nagasaki.
There’s a parallel between this discussion of the effects of a terrorist campaign and the other PW discussion du jour, that of Iran aquiring nuclear weapons.
Whenever someone brings up the point that if Iran aquires nuclear weapons it will be a threat to the US, some misguided lefty counters with a variation of the following:
“Iran with nuclear weapons would not be a threat to the US, because if they used them against us we’d nuke them into glass.”
This ignores the fact that it doesn’t take Iranian use of nuclear weapons for them to harm the US. Ignoring sneak attack scenarios stolen from bad technothrillers, Iran doesn’t need to even use nuclear weapons to harm the US. Do you think any of Irans neighbors might change their behavior to be more pro-Iranian and anti-US if the mullahs had the bomb?
It may seem callous to concentrate on effects other than directly inflicted human casualties, but it has to be done. Economic damages are real, and can result in real loss of life. Political damage is real, and can result in real loss of life.
TW: Progress. Heh.
I keep wondering, Civilis, just how many of the Lefties who make the silly argument you note (“Iran with nuclear weapons would not be a threat to the US, because if they used them against us we’d nuke them into glass.â€Â) were comfortable with the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
If their hatred of Ronald Reagan is anything to judge by, I expect that a few years (more likely months) after the new Cold War begins, there’ll be calls for a nuclear freeze by the US, opposition to any new nuclear weapons, opposition to missile defenses, and a broad view that “the mullahs love their children, too.”
Terrorist schmerrorist…
What the hell’s being done about BIRD FLU?!
WE”RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!
I think….maybe….
Darleen,
I don’t see an argument in your comment. Care to elaborate?
LO,
I think we’re in substantial agreement. By “law enforcement paradigm” I didn’t mean actual arrest and prosecution. The distinction I was attempting to draw was between discrete actions involving a handful of special forces on one hand and large-scale military operations. I agree with you that police-style rules of engagement and procedure are insufficient, and “law enforcement paradigm” was a poor choice of words.
Nice distortion of this argument. This is NOT the position of any thinking liberal I know of: “ There’s no such thing as an Islamic threat, you stupid Nascar loving bedwetters!†Of course there is an Islamic threat. The question is are we fighting effectively?
This argument should start with a concise statement of the accusation. Namely, that fear mongering by the Bush Admin and those such as yourself does nothing to help the situation and, if anything, actually plays into the terrorists psychological ploy. (So, why do you hate America?)
Secondly, this statement needs to be dissected “that takes no stock in such outmoded intangibles as national unity, doing what we feel is “right,†or doing whatâ€â€for the purposes of freedom and libertyâ€â€really must be done.†National unity? Bush has squandered that. Doing what we feel is right? I and a great many other Americans never felt (or at least don’t feel now) that Iraq had (has) anything to do with what was “rightâ€Â, we were suckered into it by the threat of WMD. And what really must be done? Fighting terrorists is what must be done. Global warfare with armies does not fit that bill.
Thirdly, your analogies of AIDS and cervical cancer are specious. Fighting them causes us no inconvenience, therefore they are not germane.
Finally, this is not about inconvenience, it’s about either a) the effective use of resources if you want to be pragmatic or b) the loss of liberty if you want to be idealistic. Being anti- (Iraq) war is the result of either. If the Bush Admin had not taken it’s eye off the ball, we would be safer. Instead they pursued a sideshow, and the safety of our airports, ports and borders have suffered. More importantly the GWoT has suffered. If we had used all those resources (personnel, money and, maybe most importantly focus) on hunting/killing terrorists, rolling up networks and not creating new terrorists, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Case in point, the evacuation of the West Virginia airport recently was due to poorly trained or inadequate staff, misguided policies, poor management and an apathetic view of technological innovation. This is becoming widely known only now, 5 years after 9/11, and is yet another nail in the GOP’s coffin.
So, you want to be afraid, go ahead. Me, I want to see our gov’t work on better ways to foil and hunting terrorists.
Mor eon the psychological aspects of fear with regard to terrorism, see here. Follow the links. This guy makes a realistic and pragmatic case for the inadequacies of our current approach, and what we need to do to better it.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/what_the_terror.html
Yet every time an alert goes up or an arrest is made, gobs of leftoids “question the timing” in unison.
Do you really think that anyone in the TSA below the top 3 pay grades really gives a damn what party is in charge? It’s a bureaucratic entity. By its nature, it’s going to suck sometimes. How many administrations/Congresses did the INS suck under?
Whether or not you know of any such people, Andrew, this is an argument we hear all the time, dropped here in these very comments by those who argue the anti-war cause.
1) Fear mongering re: the Bush admninistration begs the question. To assume that it is fear mongering they are engaged in is to attribute to them bad faith you haven’t yet proven. That you included me means you are likewise impugning my character, and without a shred of evidence. I don’t accept YOUR classification of the discussions I hold about the potential terror threats as fearmongering. I consider these discussions important to understanding the world we live in—not just the world we can imagine.
2) Bush squandered national unity? Utter horseshit. National unity was squandered when those who disagreed with Bush decided that their path back to power was to openly criticize him, sow dissent, and criticize him at every turn. I don’t even believe most of them are anti-war; they are just power-hungry, and will do and say anything to take back power. Opportunists of the most insidious kind.
As for doing what is right, your representatives had access to the intelligence and voted the way they did. Whether or not you disagree with what we’re attempting is unimportant to me. Tell me why what we are attempting is wrong. I say it’s right.
3) The arguments are not specious. To people who want to see their tax monies spent another way, or who “don’t want to wear the ribbon,” to borrow a Seinfeld scenario, there is indeed an inconvenience and a bother, if only ideologically. Conversely, those same people may not see having to stand in line a bit longer, or the surveilling of overseas calls between terrorists and operatives in the US, as an inconvenience at all. Depends on your point of view. Which was precisely the point.
4) There is nothing to these assertions but opinion. Saying the Bushies took their eye off the ball is your reading of the situation. Others would counter that they see the bigger picture better than you do.
And if it’s true, as you say, that instead of disrupting terrorists overseas they should have been concentrating on sticking their fingers in the holes of our freedoms here at home, making sure now bilge water pours in, then I suspect you and the people writing for reason would be complaining about the draconian measures the government is taking to protect the ports, or the airports, or the borders.
And I simply don’t understand how “rolling up terrorists” would prevent making new terrorists, whereas killing them encourages it.
We are arguing now over competing strategies for fighting terrorism. That is a legitimate debate. Using ridiculous and cynical statistical arguments to show that it’s not worth fighting it with a) extra security measures, or, following you, b) with military force, is silly.
The law enforcement paradigm didn’t work. And since the Bush Doctrine went into effect, we’ve not been hit by another terror attack. Blind luck? Maybe. But perhaps it’s simply a better strategy.
So the party of the New Deal and the Great Society has decided it simply isn’t cost effective to try and keep us safe from terrorists.
Thats how we got the Department of Homeland Security—from a democrat idea opposed bush, to a bush idea with an anti-democrat poison pill. National unity.
Compare and contrast:
Director of FBI: ‘That Josh and his cronies are bad dudes, we need to bring down everything we’ve got on them.’
Marine Corps Commandant: ‘That Josh and his cronies are bad dudes, we need to bring down everything we’ve got on them.’
Arellano-Felix (under arrest) v.s. Al-Zarqawi (full cardiac arrest)
Which approach would you rather suffer?
That’s a lie, and you’re a liar. It is the standard “liberal” (=reactionary progg) argument. See: daily Kos, Josh, Howard Dean, and anybody in the Establishment you care to look at.
No. The question is, and has always been, “Did we elect a Democrat?” Bill Clinton could (and did) fling cruise missiles around at random, to the full-voiced approbation of “liberals”. Bill Clinton could, and did, discard the notion of apprehending Osama as not compatible with the left-liberal worldview. Madeline Albright could, and did, apologize to the Muslim world in general for our having Marines in the way of their explosives, again with the approval of “liberals”.
Which is to say, you and the rest of the Lefties are embarrassed that your fear-mongering (that American SUVs are gonna drown the poor Bengladeshi) was always crap and is becoming less credible with time, where the Bush Admin’s simple pointing out that dangers do exist is becoming more credible. Jealousy, pure and simple.
Bull f*ing shit. Follow the “news” reports and the screams of outraged proggs. From the moment Bush appeared on the scene, the entire left-liberal Establishement has defined itself on a single axis with integer ordnates: Against Bush, and (by implication) against the entire subculture which he has adopted. I notice, because that last happens to be the subculture I’m a member of.
In other words, you weren’t paying attention, aren’t paying attention now, and fully intend to continue to plug your ears and shout “lalalalalala!” so long as George Bush is saying anything.
I’m perhaps somewhat unique among Rightists in admitting that the WMD thing was more advertising slogan than substance. But the fact is that George Bush is not the one who picked that, out of the whole stream of arguments, as The Reason for the war, and trumpeted it to the skies to the exclusion of everything else. It was the Left, as personified by the Media, who did that—and ignored (and continues to ignore) anything else that might be presented, most emphatically including the clear indications that WMD did exist and were carried off while Bush tried, futilely in the long run, to get the UN and the “international community” off the dime.
No. Electing Democrats is what must be done, along with disenfranchising any portion of the so-called “electorate” that (a) attends church or (b) objects to being taxed to support your client groups. As demonstrated by aspirin factories and Chinese embassies, a Democrat has carte blanche. A Republican has no permission (from you) to do anything.
Nor has anybody anywhere with any schred of credibility suggested that it does. Ground warfare with armies may or may not be useful in some situations. Rejecting it as a possibility simply gives the other side freedom to plan at less expense.
Bullshit. In both cases, spending on research relating to those diseases is vastly (like 100 to 1) out of proportion to the number of people who actually suffer from them, at the cost of research on things that do affect millions.
AIDS is especially apropos. When the disease first came to the United States it could have been almost completely contained by changing the behavior of one very small subgroup—indiscriminately promiscuous male homosexuals. Since that was not politically possible, the disease has escaped into the general population (although IPMHs disproportiately make up the list of sufferers.) The analogy with Jimmah and the Hostages is precise.
More iin another post.
Regards,
Ric
tw:job, trials of.
There are a couple of points made by previous commenters that bear repeating:
It took my 401K over a year to recover after 9/11. My loss is nothing compared to those who had a relative or friend killed. I’m trying to emphasize that we underestimate the economic effects of 9/11. In an economy as large as ours, we shrugged it off and continued, but it was a big hit, easily in the ten or hundred billion dollar range.
The bird flu comment is more apropos than anyone wants to admit. Bioweapons are easier to smuggle into a country than a nuke, and potentially more deadly. A repeat of the Spanish Flu epidemic – which had no malevolent intent behind it – would kill millions. When your enemy doesn’t care about his own life, deterring him is difficult at best.
Again, we’ve been at war with Iran and its proxies for almost 30 years. I wonder if we’ll get serious in my lifetime?
Love your last paragaraph, Jeff.
Here is another Reason blogger who asserts Iran is sort of a laugh, military wise. Guess these fellas are doing a charming folk dance.
The excerpted article suggests that our best response to terrorism is not even up to that of a herd of wildebeest being stalked chronically by lions.
At least when the wildebeest realized they’re being stalked, they react. This bozo is advising something more along the lines of the “sitting duck” strategy.
– So then if we follow the “don’t look, don’t see” approach of the proggs, wherein the risks are low so why bother, when the first American city goes up in radioactive dust they’ll blow it off, since thats just one city in many thousands.
– Is that about it. Their latest “reason” for being chickenshit on defending America.
Ace’s argument, by contrast, chooses one person with a particularly low risk of HIV infection. If everyone throughout the population had the same risk of HIV infection that Ace does, then it would in fact make sense to move scarce public resources away from fighting AIDS.
NOTE: I AM NOT HIM
Er, the overwhelming majority of the US population is in the “particularly low risk” category of HIV infection.
Approximately 4% of US adult males, homosexuals, are responsible for about 64% of all new HIV cases.
This is NOT the position of any thinking liberal I know of: “ There’s no such thing as an Islamic threat, you stupid Nascar loving bedwetters!†Of course there is an Islamic threat. The question is are we fighting effectively?
Hilarious.
The delusion you must engage in to be a liberal is stunning in it’s degree.
Thirdly, your analogies of AIDS and cervical cancer are specious. Fighting them causes us no inconvenience, therefore they are not germane.
You mean except for all that money that comes out of my paychecks, right?
As Jeff points out above, that is an opinion which is not supported by the facts or experience.
The really painful thing in all this is that you and the rest of the left-liberal proggs have completely abandoned your own arguments. “Why do they hate us?” you cried. “They killed the wrong guys,” Michael Moore complained.
George Bush has answers to those questions. The measures he is taking are designed to address them. Specifically: The reason they hate us is that their bosses, the mad mullahs and despots, tell them to. The solution to the problem is to eliminate the people who are spreading hate around. Saddam Hussein is (or was, before you and the rest of the idiots took the sting off) primarily an object lesson to the others in that direction. But that, of course, is getting into specifics of the different approaches—which you aren’t addressing, except to snark, so there’s no point in introducing substance.
George Bush and the GOP establishment did not want to set up a bureaucratic feelgood structure in response to terrorism. He resisted the formation of Homeland Security until the unanimous cries of Democrats were joined by GOPers of the “do something, even if it’s wrong” persuasion. The entire agency and its activities are, purely and simply, symbolic bullshit that does nothing that couldn’t have been done, and done better, under the previous rubric.
Any left-Liberal who sneers at airline security and the like gets “bullshit!” from me. That’s your baby, and yours alone, and you get the rap for all the crap it hands out. Yours. Eat it.
Which is to say: the right way to fight AIDS is to wait until people contract it, then issue a blank check for any possible treatment options regardless of whether they might do any good or not.
Which is, in fact, pretty much the current approach, with a little cosmetic background research for verisimilitude. To the scientists’ credit, the background research is into a really, really tough problem that can’t and won’t yield to a full-court press approach; that doesn’t change the fact that you and the rest of the left-liberal proggs are fully in accord with treating the symptoms and leaving the disease alone. Same with the WOT.
That would’ve worked a lot better if the links did.
The big one did work, and led to one of the “we’re doing what the terrorists want” apologists. The fact of the matter is that no matter what we do along the lines of what you demand we are “doing what the terrorists want”, because that’s how the whole f*ing campaign was designed.
Any, all, and every variant or prong of what some call the “law enforcement approach” to terrorism “does what the terrorists want” because of exactly what Scheier points out: anything we do disrupts our lives, and disruption is the point.
Western civilization is vastly interconnected and interdependent. We live on velocity, the ability to conceive, design, and conclude deals and designs quickly. Anything that slows that down or puts roadblocks in it cuts into our prosperity. You are quite correct, as Scheier is, that such things as tight airport security work in that direction—but since you (that is, your party and its sympathizers; I don’t know your personal inclinations) absolutely reject anything resembling an individual personal-responsibility approach to the problem, the choice is between doing a mild version of “what they want” and letting them get away with more outrageous ones.
Which people are beginning to notice, therefore the various vigilante actions that are starting to spring up. They’re going to get worse because they are a response to your party’s absolute denial of what the motivations and intentions of the Islamists actually is, so all the measures you design fail and will continue to fail.
Unless the root causes are addressed, the problem will continue to get worse—and the root causes are not the Mooreonic Convergence. They have nothing whatever to do with Imperialism, with Oppression, or with any of the other socioeconomic notions, fundamentally Marxist, that are the only things your party will allow as bases for debate. The Bush Doctrine is designed to address the root causes—the real ones, not the imaginary bullshit your party puts forward—and, as such, is the only approach that might actually succeed in the end.
Regards,
Ric
If the Bush Admin had not taken it’s eye off the ball, we would be safer. Instead they pursued a sideshow, and the safety of our airports, ports and borders have suffered. More importantly the GWoT has suffered.
Proof?
TW: lack – lack of facts…
It’s amazing to watch those who so recently considered the condition of a balance of power by Mutual(ly) Assured Destruction to be an immoral abomination change to welcoming such a condition…
It’s easy for people like Andrew to say ‘we should have gone after the terrorists and done so in such a way so as to keep everybody happy’ when they don’t have to come up with ways to keep people happy that like terrorism, or like people who like terrorism better than they like the US.
“You have to focus on dealing with terrorists. oh, and Iraq, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Sudan and Saudi Arabia are all off limits, as making them mad makes more terrorists. And we expect it done by the next election. Cheap. With no loss of civil liberties. And cure cancer while you’re at it.”
This sort of approach generates its own set of problems. First, for it to be effective, it must be covert, which limits the amount of oversight by the public and breeds massive potential for abuse. Second, by their very nature, special forces operations are limited in size and scope. No holding territory. You need to rely on bases located some distance from the operational area, and hope that when the NYT publishes its expose on the goverments covert war your allies don’t pull support to cover their own asses. Special forces alone make good action movie and technothriller novel heroes, but don’t work so well in the real world.
Maybe the airports and borders would be more secure if the PC libtards had not turned the hiring practices of the TSA into a political football, and if they were not quite so concerned about the Mexican vote, or nonracially profiling grannies and paraplegics.
Josh has all the common sense of a junior high school girl.
TW: The gene pool needs cleaning.
Sorry Andrew not Josh
The left runs airline security, because of the DHS that bush promoted and even beat on democrats for opposing? Thats almost as good as ‘George Bush has answers to those questions. ‘
Nice job, actus. You got that one precisely backwards.
No, actus, you aren’t allowed to rewrite history.
Bush opposed the formation of DHS until it became politically inevitable. He then, like any good politico, made such adjustments to it as were possible and would benefit his buddies, just as the Democrats who were crying for it did.
Yours, lock, stock, and (nonfunctional) barrel. Enjoy.
Regards,
Ric
Thinking Liberal…right. What plans or suggestions have these so-called thinking liberals produced so far? Their response has been nothing but partisan, selectively oblique or wholly reactionary in nature. What exactly has the Democratic Party or the anti-war crowd offered in ways of improving the situation in the Iraq? Answer, nothing. They have belittled the effort, predicted doom & failure from the get-go & used it solely as a means to promote their political ascension in lieu of an actual coherent foreign policy platform. No major Democrat has offered a plan, much less an effective plan that doesn’t include turning military control over to someone else (while the US still foots the bill), cutting & running (ala Vietnam), or increasing the number of troops (1 against the wishes of the elected Iraqi Government, 2 thus inflaming the general population & increasing locale & Middle Eastern anti-Americanism, 3 fulfilling the self prophesized quagmire meme). All of these steps will actually do nothing but inflame the delicate balance, ignore the wishes of the Iraqi people & be used in return as political rhetoric as a means to re-capture a White House they couldn’t win outright by policy or purpose. Hell, the Democratic standard-bearer, John F. Kerry has switched positions & support of the war w/ each & every poll since mid 2003. His 2004 Presidential Campaign’s position was essentially that he would run the war differently than Bush by including nations who would never support the action in any or form (France, Germany, Russia, etc) or who have been shown to be in economic & illegal negotiations w/ Saddam & directly violated UN provisions & sanctions. If the war is so corrupt or performed so ineptly why has Congress continued its support both in votes & in paying the bill?
I’m sure you’ll argue that Democrats would better defend the US against further attacks. How exactly again? By preventing the Patriot Act from being renewed, preventing air marshals from being deployed on domestic & foreign flights, by preventing monitoring the communications of Al Qaeda or suspected terrorists, by re-erecting the “Gorelick†wall between domestic & foreign intelligence communities again, by no longer using perfectly legal & useful financial monitoring programs, by treating terrorists as common criminals guaranteed civil rights & mirandazation before questioning& not as active participants in a war or by simply letting another group of terrorists come into the US, use our flights schools & hi-jack another series of planes after the WTC had already been attacked & Al Qaeda had already declared war on the US. Each & every thing mentioned above has been questioned, fought against & publicly opposed by the leaders of the Democratic Party. The funny thing is that it almost encapsulates the entire Presidential political platform put-forth by the current Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean.
While Bush may or may not have taken his eyes off the ball – a supposition I wholeheartedly disagree with – I am afraid the Dems haven’t bothered to look for the ball, much less the playing field or at the opposing team… they are still reeling & complaining about a lost in a different sport 6 seasons ago, to be bothered. Their sole contribution so far is to remove any moderates from their own team & denounce the game-plan of the players actually playing from the stands.
As a person who was until recently a fairly frequent airline traveler, I will add that the policies and procedures of DHS as required by (mostly) the proggs were dysfunctional from the very beginning, and have not improved with time. They were, and are, reactive, ineffective, nitpicking, politically correct advertising, not “security”.
Iron law: perimeter security is bad security. It may be all you can do, but it is never good enough.
When you aren’t even permitted to separate sheep from goats, the perimeter is always going to be leaky.
There are any number of things that could have been done to make air travel actually safer, rather than try to give the impression of working really, really hard at it (while accomplishing nearly nothing.) All of them are things that involve defense in depth—putting security efforts into answering the musical question “what happens when some of them get through?” Unfortunately all of those things depend on invoking public cooperation, community solidarity, and citizen involvement—things the proggs continually bleat about, and do everything they can to frustrate in the real world.
For instance: I once proposed a “volunteer air marshall” program. That is, we’d really rather not have vigilateeism, because the individuals don’t have full knowledge of what’s going on and are apt to react in ways that aren’t appropriate; the air marshalls are, presumably, trained to minimize that problem. Therefore, open Air Marshal training to the general public—allow people who want to be involved and are willing to pay for it a course teaching them the things air marshals learn. A graduate of such a course would get ID as a Deputy Air Marshal. Sweetener being that a graduate of such a program, having had the whole background investigation and training, would be eligible to bypass boarding security. Possibly they’d be entitled to carry a firearm; certainly they’d be allowed nonlethal weapons (variants of clubs, etc.).
I know literally dozens of people who would have shelled out up to five grand for such a course, even without the sweeteners; with them, the sky’s the limit. Such a program could have both financed the rest of the air marshal training (through profits on offering the course) and put literally tens of thousands of trained first-responders in place at essentially no cost.
We now pause for the litany of bleats as to why that is a totally unacceptable proposal. I think I’ve heard them all; the contest is to come up with one I haven’t seen before.
Regards,
Ric
I read the history as far as you got. Then I continued to read the history, and saw that he in turn promoted it, but inserted into it a poison pill that the democrats would be against. So yes. Bush was in favor of DHS. True, as you point out—and I did too previously in this thread—that was after he was against it. But in the end he was in favor of it.
So DHS is something that Bush supports. Its also something that he implements, seeing as how its part of the executive branch. So he can’t run away from it, or blame what it does on the people who aren’t in power and opposed what he wanted done with it.
Maybe you should read this (from Hot Air). Notice the appearance of a statisical “argument” similar to the Reason piece.
Ric,
An effective variant of that is the one utilized by the Brits – “Sorry, if he’s on, I’m off.” It really puts the airlines in a bind if you’ve checked luggage. It’s going to spin the lefties heads off their shoulders but it’s worth a try.
I agree with your premise but it ain’t going to be validated. Shunning has corrected behavior in the past – there’s no reason why it shouldn’t in the present.
I have absolutely no hope or expectations from the cattle who constitute the “moderate muslim’ contingent until they are forced to endure public opprobium for their silence. They sit there and mutter ‘inshallah” no matter what happens. Let them mutter it while they’re driving home from a flight from which they were booted.
The chance of a ‘lightning strike’ go up substantially if you allow a muslim male between the ages of 17 and 40 within a hundred yards – just think of it as not taking shelter under the tallest tree during a thunderstorm.
Um… If this sort of statistical argument is so good, then let’s apply it to the 2619 American military fatalities since OIF began. That works out to almost exactly 2 per day. That’s nothing, so why does the MainScream Media play up the total every time it passes a multiple of 500?
TW: blood
This is just too scary!
Once again, Actus, you were caught in your misrepresentations and demonstrated that you can do nothing but duck and weave.
Bzzt! No! Bullshit, actus.
I have an acquaintance on another thread who crows that Bush, and Texans, must necessarily be in favor of wind power. Look how many windmills there are in the Panhandle! And more being built every day!
In reality, of course, windmills in Texas are there because (1) there’s a big subsidy for building windmills and (2) when money falls from the sky, Texans wear big hats.
Same thing with DHS. The press for DHS was, in large part, a combination of a way to generate a purely symbolic “security apparatus” and a method for getting Democrats what they wanted, i.e., a big new Unionized (and therefore Democrat-voting) constituency. The “poison pill” you mention was simply that the new agency wouldn’t be unionized by default. It had, and has, absolutely nothing whatever to do with any security-related activity that the agency might engage in. And Bush’s requirement was also a combination—he wanted to know just how serious the Democrats were about appointing Prince Potemkin Security Chief, besides being opposed to public-sector unionization from first principles.
Once it became politically inevitable that the new source of pork and political influence was going to be put in place, Bush and his allies did what they could to benefit from it, like any other bunch of politicians. That doesn’t in any way cancel the basic fact that DHS is the creature of the Democrats, and its policies and procedures are purely Democrat-approved, politically correct, and ultimately about as effective in providing security as the windmills are in providing power.
Even if Bush and the Administration wanted to turn DHS into something effective, they’d be stymied at every turn by political correctness, Democratic-party politics, and the insistence upon preserving the civil liberties of everybody except the productive members of American society characteristic of proggs in general, and the ACLU, MSM, and DNC in particular.
Yours, in toto. Enjoy.
Regards,
Ric
Whether or not you know of any such people, Andrew, this is an argument we hear all the time, dropped here in these very comments by those who argue the anti-war cause.
1) Fear mongering re: the Bush admninistration begs the question. To assume that it is fear mongering they are engaged in is to attribute to them bad faith you haven’t yet proven. That you included me means you are likewise impugning my character, and without a shred of evidence. I don’t accept YOUR classification of the discussions I hold about the potential terror threats as fearmongering. I consider these discussions important to understanding the world we live inâ€â€not just the world we can imagine.
Whether it’s bad faith (to gain political traction, ala dropping poll numbers = terror alerts which is a startlingly coincidental occurence) or just ineptitude and (intentionally?) bad management of the TSA, either way, it’s an ineffective response to the terrorism. And, I assert, it does play to the terrorists gain. If we are terrorized, they have achieved thier goal. To wit, as your commenters have pointed out financial loss does count. A major terrorist strike would devastate this country economically. Constant terror alerts and changes to airport security levels do the same thing, it’s just the death of a thousand cuts. Don’t believe me? Carry on baggage restrictions in this country have already been markedly curtailed from original levels and wereeven originally less than UK’s, probably due to the hardship on airline operations, not because the threat level is less or because we have found ways to counter the “liquid explosive” threat (if there ever really was one. See the Bruce Schnieder article I linked earlier for more links on that.) As to your assertion that your discussions ar enot fearmongering, what are your qualifications as a domestic security expert? Airline travel security expert? Terrorist threat security expert? I may have no particular standing in your eyes, but having a blog gives you no particular standing in mine. Net sum zero. Oh, except that others (TBogg) have accused you and Ace of fearmongering, so it’s not just me.
2) Bush squandered national unity? Utter horseshit. National unity was squandered when those who disagreed with Bush decided that their path back to power was to openly criticize him, sow dissent, and criticize him at every turn. I don’t even believe most of them are anti-war; they are just power-hungry, and will do and say anything to take back power. Opportunists of the most insidious kind.
Yes, well politicians will do that. Especially when they see the president distracted by a shiny object. (and, no, I’m not saying he’s dumb, it’s a metaphor for neocon fables of triumphalist glory [They’ll meet us in the streets with flowers].) But don’t assume I approve of D politicians either. And seriously, you need to lighten up on the oppositions cynicism. There are good ones and bad ones, just like in the R party.
As for doing what is right, your representatives had access to the intelligence and voted the way they did. Whether or not you disagree with what we’re attempting is unimportant to me. Tell me why what we are attempting is wrong. I say it’s right.
It’s wrong because it doesn’t fight the GWoT. Specifically a) it diverts funds and resources from defending Americans, first and foremost, from tangible (key word here) national security threats. I reject the notion (as I have yet to see any evidence) that offensive military actions against middle east countries that are not currently in arms against us deter terrorist attacks here at home (afghanistan, sure, but Iraq? Even Bush said it didn’t just the other day) and b) it helps terrorism by radicalizing overseas groups against the US, groups that may have been content to stay local. It also gives them valuable training and intelligence about out more aggressive, military CT tactics, tactics I swould rather they find out about as a suprise, when we kick in thier doors in Dearborn, or Lebanon, or Indonesia. and c) It ties up our military forces. If our army wasn’t currently in Iraq and thus tied up, wouldn’t our “ Give up the nukes or we’ll invade Iran” hand be stronger? Or even our military support of Israel in the recent dust-up been stronger, and we/they have not had to settle for a “both sides proclaiming victory” victory?
3) The arguments are not specious. To people who want to see their tax monies spent another way, or who “don’t want to wear the ribbon,†to borrow a Seinfeld scenario, there is indeed an inconvenience and a bother, if only ideologically. Oh, sorry, I thought you were talking about “ideals” not just filthy money. Your argument certainly seems to have studiously ignored that point. In that case, let’s talk about the tens of millions in no bid contracts, or even just the cost of sustaining a standing army in Iraq. If that money was not tied up over there, what could we have done with it at home? 300 Billion to date, right? Cured cancer AND AIDS, AND poverty AND adequately protected this country AND chased terrorists around the world? This gets back to the cost benefit ratio thing, and, frankly, for all the money we’ve spent, and the current best case scenarios envisioned for Iraq, we may just have well burned it.
Conversely, those same people may not see having to stand in line a bit longer, or the surveilling of overseas calls between terrorists and operatives in the US, as an inconvenience at all. Depends on your point of view. Which was precisely the point.
I’d agree that it’s apoint of view thing if either of those actually worked or even helped. But they don’t and the latter has had questionable levles of oversight.
4) There is nothing to these assertions but opinion. Saying the Bushies took their eye off the ball is your reading of the situation. Others would counter that they see the bigger picture better than you do.
Even conservative pundits from George Will to William F. Buckley and gov’t terrorism officials, including the State department, the CIA and the NCTC all agree that the Iraq war has not made us safer or reduced terrorism. How am I not seeing the bigger terrorism picture? Even if we manage to extract ourselves from Iraq and somehow leave a stable gov’t, we are still essentially where we started (if not worse off) wrt to radical Islamists.
And if it’s true, as you say, that instead of disrupting terrorists overseas
not what I said, or intended, see the above
they should have been concentrating on sticking their fingers in the holes of our freedoms here at home, making sure now bilge water pours in, then I suspect you and the people writing for reason would be complaining about the draconian measures the government is taking to protect the ports, or the airports, or the borders.
Again not what I said or intended. Defense of the homeland should always be only a part of our CT fight. Offensive operations, some on th epolice model, like UK’s but also some on the Special Forces model like Afghanistan, and some on the CIA model like Cold War espionage, sabotage, state puppets, coups, proxy wars could all be potential tools. (Very un-PC of me, eh? But it worked in the Cold War and, although it’s a longer method, it’s less risky and lower profile, so there is less chance they will necessarily see it coming. Right now we have a huge target painted on every American or Iraqi sympathizer)
And I simply don’t understand how “rolling up terrorists†would prevent making new terrorists, whereas killing them encourages it.
Please don’t be obtuse. The war in Iraq has been the best recruiting tool and training ground the Islamists could ever ask for. How many of these guys are going to be the ones making the next bomb that goes off and kills American civilians?
We are arguing now over competing strategies for fighting terrorism.
That’s how you would like to call phrase the debate. I call it trying to focus on fighting terrorism and get off the neocon bandwagon. Again I point to Bush’s words
Notice he said “freedom agenda” and “threats” not “fighting Islamic Terrorists”. Curious that.
That is a legitimate debate. Using ridiculous and cynical statistical arguments to show that it’s not worth fighting it with a) extra security measures, or, following you, b) with military force, is silly.
Hmmm, ridiculous and silly. Nice.
The law enforcement paradigm didn’t work.
As I said above, military might isn’t the only alternative to law enforcement.
And since the Bush Doctrine went into effect, we’ve not been hit by another terror attack. Blind luck? Maybe. But perhaps it’s simply a better strategy.
Which reasoning reminds me of the “no elephants here!” joke. Also, maybe the terrorists feel sorry for us, as we seem to be doing more damage all on our own, in terms of economic drain, loss of overseas support, increasing oil prices, erosion of our will to fight, etc than they could ever cause.
Seriously, go read that Schnieder article. It’s really very good.
Oh, god, no, please, not again! How about a revival of the “Arms are for hugging!” bumpersticker? Gack.
(here’s a page of Peace and Disarmament Buttons – notice they’ve kept up with the times, you can now buy a “Who would Jesus bomb?” button. Cleh-vair.)
tw: that’s both arms now
P.S. Nice dissertation there, Andrew. But maybe you could have just cut it down to the last sentence? Or so.
Eloi.
Actus is an Eloi.
To whoever coined it, I thank you.
The left is Eloi.
And I will still help stop the Morlochs from killing them.
So help me God.
Damn Bible thumper!
“The left is Eloi.”
Are Eloi.
Damn vodka.
Bullshit, Andrew.
All you’ve done here is repeat your original proposition: that the way (by you, the only way) to fight terrorism is after the fact, one incident and one perpetrator at a time. That is, the way to fight AIDS is to wait until people contract it, then spend every dime available to cure the individual, with no reference whatever to causes, vectors, or anything other than the one sick person.
You, and the rest of the left-liberal proggs, are correct in some of your assertions. It’s just that the conclusions you reach don’t follow. There are people who hate us, for all kinds of reasons, some of them valid, some simply stupid. Some number of those are willing to do violent things to act out that hate. This will always be so; the number might be smaller if we were less successful, but so long as we exist the number will never be zero.
But things that work will be repeated. Tactics that don’t work will eventually be abandoned. At present we are faced with an enemy whose tactics are working, and who therefore repeat them. We have to attack and defend in two very different ways.
You are quite correct that the “security” measures we take tend to achieve the terrorists’ goals. Where you fail is in recognizing that if we did not take those measures, their original violent tactics would also achieve those goals—if we have airline security on the present model, it’s oppressive, expensive, and disruptive of commerce; if we don’t have airline security, they can blow up airplanes to the same end. *All* of your proposed individual, after-the-fact measures have the same effect. The counters are expensive and disruptive; if no counter is put in place, the damage that would be done is expensive and disruptive. The absolute best that the “law enforcement approach” can achieve is to hold the line while something effective is done elsewhere.
What you might do, for just a moment, is consider the Russo-Japanese War and why it came to occur. Terrorism is happening for exactly the same reason, and if you can articulate what that reason is I’ll consider you worthy of paying attention to. Care to try?
Regards,
Ric
Hmmmm.
@ Jeff Goldstein
So. Terrorism as a column in an actuarial table? What an insane concept.
So perhaps my odds of dying from an act of terrorism are worse than the odds of my pants mysteriously falling down, me tripping and falling over and accidently impregnating Anna Kournikova.
It’s still an insane concept.
No, their goal is to win. If we are terrorized and give up, they achieve their goal. If we are terrorized and kick their fucking asses, they fail.
No, B. Moe. You’re making the same mistake Andrew is, just coming from a different direction.
If we are terrorized, respond by kicking their asses, and the other potential terrorists work it out that that’s not The Way To do It, we win. Otherwise we just end up repeatedly ass-kicking, which may be fun but doesn’t accomplish anything.
Regards,
Ric
Caught? Up in the thread before I mentioned Bush’s previous opposition to DHS, and what made him change his mind, a chance at “national unity.”
And its on that basis that I say you can’t blame the democrats for the DHS that Bush not only supported, but has run for its entire existence.
Actually, its ultra-rational.
Ric – The fun thing about history is that every new era brings it’s own version of Attilla, and so they’ll most likely always be a need to kick ass, at least until the human lifespan makes building more practical than taking. It’s entirely understandable that people don’t want to fight or sacrifice. they see it never seems to end, so its one hell of a lot easier to pretend anything else will stop the aggressiveness. Like all generations, they have to be taught they have no real choice. When the cost of avoidence gets too steep, then they will deal, not before that.
– Oh and actus. Were that we were dealing with rational thinkers, then all your ad hoc idea’s would really be masterful. Unfortunately fascist despots are clever, resourceful, but seldom rational, so trying to “reason”, and talk your way out of the crosshairs, is like hoping if you’re nice to Mr. cobra he will not bite you. You can wine him, and dine him, and make him feel at home, and he will bite you anyway. When the despots win the “elite” are always the first to be shot. There is no dishonor in being afraid. The dishonor is in letting your fear make you powerless to defend when you need to. If you let that happen then your enemies are probably right. You don’t deserve to live.
I wouldnt say that the only rational approach is talking. But I don’t think its possible to have purely rational approach to terror. Not when we have people saying fear is a good thing on our side. Even if they weren’t saying that, we’d still have irrational fear.
God you people need to get out more.
BBH,
So the secret is to never be too good at providing security, isn’t it?
I’m reminded of something I first came across in the work of Jack Vance, the science fiction writer: Human beings evolved under conditions that placed them in constant danger from everything from saber-toothed tigers to hostile neighbor tribes. It therefore follows that danger is something we have evolved to accommodate… there follows then the leap: that danger is something we have to have to stay healthy, just as we need vitamins and exercise.
The hypothesis would certainly explain a lot of things, most especially the fixation by the MSM and the like on blood-and-guts stories, not to mention the popularity of conspiracy theories—both have the effect of providing something scary out of a situation that seems relatively peaceful, so people in need of fright supplements would tend to seek them out. It would also go a long way toward explaining people like Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky—they’re suffering from mental disorders caused by lack of sufficient scariness in their diet. Kwarshiorkor of the frontal lobes.
Vance then proposed a corps of dedicated public servants, the Ferocifers or Public Terrifiers, whose assignment is to severely frighten each citizen from time to time, as their mental health requires. I don’t think we actually need any such program—there are plenty of scares and terrors around, some real, some faux. All we have to do is let a few through from time to time. Of course we always have people like Andrew, whose proposition is that that’s already happening. If so, the dose seems entirely insufficient from where I sit.
Regards,
Ric
Can you elaborate? Almost every policy choice is a tradeoff. Just as we could drastically curtail the risk of car accidents by lowering speed limits to 10mph, we could increase our safety from terrorism by becoming a police state. In both cases, we don’t do either because there is a general consensus that the increase in safety/security is outweighed by the infringement of other values. Others have pointed out the crudity of the approximation of the net harm from terrorism in the Reasonpiece, but I don’t see why it’s prime facie “insane” to approach it from a cost-benefit perspective.
Approximately 4% of US adult males, homosexuals, are responsible for about 64% of all new HIV cases.
True or not, this misses my point. My point was that, in assessing whether investment in HIV prevention/treatment is good from a policy perspective, the average risk of HIV infection is what is relevant, rather than the risk of infection for someone (Ace) who is at the extremely low end of the risk curve.
Whats relevant is everyone’s risk.
What a great thread. The commenters who have pointed out (quite correctly) the incidental costs of terror and the susceptability of our networked culture to disruption are dead on point. If we don’t fight to win, and win soon, we run the risk of liberal administrations/legislatures kicking the can past the point of no return. They will NOT confront, much less attack, the root causes of Islamist terror – for them to do so would mean abandoning the canons of multiculturalism, moral relativism, and formally embracing the institution of American democracy as superior to other forms of government.
That’s not going to happen. By “kicking the can”, I mean they will respond to terror with more beauracracy that adversely impacts citizens and not terrorists, more rhetoric, more pork… to the point of economic suicide and collapse of our society. Clinton let OBL skate on multiple occassions, subsidized the North Korean nuclear industry, and established what appears to be an endless U.S. military presence in Kosovo. But he really cared for the children.
In complex systems fatal errors may occur literally years before the consequences manifest. AIDS is a good case and has already been mentioned. I would propose the destruction of the black family unit as well as the explosion of polygamyst cults in the American west during the sixties as direct results of generational welfare and multiple other entitlements such as food stamps and AFDC.
Liberals care. They want you to know it. Matter of fact, they’ve got most of the establishment media and the bulk of public and higher educational organs lined up to ‘splain to you just how taking capital from demographic A folk and then giving it to demographic B folk will Make The World A Better Place.
Just don’t have the termity to actually demand accountability, or heaven forbid, real solutions. Oh, and don’t adlib your lines if they fall outside your ordained demographic…
I have noticed the upward spiral of deaths per attack over the years as well. There comes a time when good men finally tire of waiting for a messy job to be done. If the state will not provide for the security of the governed, the governed always pick up the slack. Or they line up for the trains. Not much chance of that happening here outside of some bluer states and locales that leap to mind, of course.
The critical point in time for this conflict is this:
Will we kick enough ass fast enough through state action on foreign shores, combined with aggressive domestic law enforcement, to win the fight before the deciding battles are fought between street mobs here at home?
The Left wants political power back but their philosophy – over – reality mentality has them swimming with anvils on. The old formula of paying off client constituencies with the money of productive but vote-poor demographics fell apart in the eighties due to the economic hardship and moral vacuum resultant from the previous fifty years of liberal control. The real threat of you or your family dying by the actions of an identifiable agency focuses the attention of all but the most cynical or ignorant – and far outweighs mere partisan bribes when it comes to choosing leaders – especially in a time when poverty is considered having to make do with a used car or a used TV and not where the next meal is coming from.
I try to vote for the best man, not for any party. At the present time I would no sooner support a local democrat for national office than I would voluntarily pursue a heroin habit. Organizationally, institutionally, and philosphically, the logical end result of “progressive/Big L” party control on any nation of free men would likely be indistinguishable from what the terrorists have in mind.
It took a while to write this.
Close, Josh. The average risk is one of the factors that is relevant.
In protecting against meteor strikes, the average risk is about the only thing that’s relevant. (Note that it isn’t zero; people and their houses have been struck by meteorites.) That’s because we have no reason whatever to believe that there’s any mechanism Up There that selects particular Americans to be beaned by bolides.
In deciding what to do about AIDS, the “average risk” is almost (though not quite) meaningless, because that “average” is arrived at by adding the contributions of a few whose risk is near unity to the contributions of many whose risk is near zero. Ace, and I, and many other people, are at a risk of contracting AIDS so near zero the number has to be written with (negative) exponents. Those whose risk is significant have a risk factor of near unity because of their behavior, not because of anything random that might also hit me, or Ace.
Relatively inexpensive means of changing the behavior of the at-risk population could make huge (as a ratio) improvements in the average risk, by enormously reducing the huge risk of the at-risk groups without changing my risk at all. Way out at the limit of that: if we simply shot all the indiscriminately promiscuous male homosexuals, it would take roughly a million bullets at $0.50 per. That half a million bucks would, all by itself, reduce the average risk of all Americans of AIDS infection by a factor of ten. (I do not propose that as a serious remedy. I’m simply pointing out where the statistical arguments really lead, rather than where you’d like them to go.)
Regards,
Ric
– The law of unintended consequences is all but totally missing from the progressive(Big L) brain. Or perhaps it’s all that mental wrestling with “reality” that shades them from that responsibility. With the Left it always comes back to responsibility avoidence in the end. An over-developed artiste side of the brain, that simply can’t deal with the cold “dirty”, disgusting aspects of the “real” world, and “real” human nature. They need their mommies.