Nuisance Terror
Mark Steyn has a column on Kerry's terror as a nuisance line, what it means and why it is such a dangerous idea:
The ''I'll hunt down and kill America's enemies'' line was written for him and planted on his lips. The ''It's just a nuisance like prostitution'' line is his, and how he really thinks of the issue. What an odd analogy. Your average jihadist won't take kindly to having his martyrdom operation compared with the decadent infidels' sex industry, but the rest of us shouldn't be that happy about it either. Kerry is correct in the sense that even if you dispatched every constable in the land to crack down on prostitution there'd still be some pox-ridden whore somewhere touting for business. But, on the other hand, applying the Kerry prostitute approach to terrorists would seem to leave rather a lot of them in place. In Boston, where he served as a ''law enforcement person,'' the Yellow Pages are full of lavish display ads for not-all-that-euphemistic ''escort services.'' In other words, while you can make an argument for a ''managerial'' approach to terrorism, the analogy with prostitution sounds more like an undeclared surrender. This is aside from the basic defect of the argument: If some gal in your building is working as a prostitute, that's a nuisance -- condoms in the elevator, johns in the lobby; if Islamists seize the schoolhouse and kill your kids, even if it only happens once every couple of years, ''nuisance'' doesn't quite cover it.Read the whole thing. I won''t claim to know for sure what Kerry was thinking when he said that. The man has turned being inscrutible into an art form. I know for sure though that hoping to go back to a Sept. 10 mindset is very dangerous, because a Sept. 10 mindset is what you have right before a Sept 11th. This bit from Steyn's column is also worth thinking about:
In 2000, after 17 sailors were killed on the U.S.S. Cole, Defense Secretary Bill Cohen said the attack ''was not sufficiently provocative'' to warrant a response.One of the great dangers of the philosophy that violence doesn't justify violence is that it plays fully into the hands of those whole don't believe that violence needs no justification at all.
posted by Dave Justus | 10/18/2004 02:57:00 PM
9 Comments:
Hi, Dave. Sorry about this, but I'm in a snarky mood this morning so I'm just going to be direct:
You're totally missing the point.
Terrorism earns justification by our response. Osama bin Laden isn't Charles Manson, you know. He's a cult leader intent on revolutionizing the Middle East. As you know, the "War on Terror" isn't a personal battle. It's not a me vs. you thing, it's us vs. them, and bin Laden considers himself on the side of Muslims and Arabs in the Middle East. So he engineers a few attacks against western targets, nobody pays attention, and he looks like a powerless and fumbling idiot--a nuisance. Then suddenly, he manages to pull off a high profile (but still low-yield) attack and he gets a medal for being the guy who "changed everything." Now the world is focused on the Middle East, and even if all of al-Qaeda, even if all terrorists, get squelched, Osama bin Laden will have won.
He's a petulant five year old who's been throwing spitballs at us, but with the idiot revolution that followed 9/11, he's now the five year old that the whole world is listening to. And it's because of dumb, upside-ideas, like the one you wrote here. Here's what it boils down to:
The U.S. thinks:
Terrorism is bad, and terrorists have no respect for life.
Terrorists think:
We need change, and look at that, terrorism work!
See, the U.S. (including yourself) is obsessed with fighting terrorism, but the terrorists aren't. They don't have a particular passion for terrorism beyond the fact that it's effective and cheap. Nor do they care about themselves and their groups. If they cared about those things, they wouldn't be killing themselves. They care about their wives, children, and extended families, just like us. And as we give all our attention to the Middle East, even if its to different leaders and groups, we justify terrorism at the same time as we fight it.
The alternative is to tackle terrorists threats comprehensively and quietly. The alternative is to turn American politics away from terrorism, and back to pressing issues in both domestic and foreign affairs. If there is one thing in the world that must drive a terrorist crazy, it would be the act of dismissively brushing off their attacks. If you treat terrorist attacks as nuisances rather than crises, and all of a sudden they don't accomplish anything, the motivation for them will dry up. But if you rebuild every part of the world that a terrorist comes from, you'll see terrorists popping up in every shitty part of the world. And you'll just be caught in a vicious circle, but with the weakest side--the terrorist side--in control.
And one more thing:
30 dead kids every few years is a lot less of a nuisance than broken alliances, thousands of dead soldiers, tens of thousands of dead foreign civilians, strapped militaries, and widescale political discord. Forgetting my motivation-argument, if everyting above is the cost of fighting a few idiots who are too weak to stage a real attack, the fight's just not worth it.
No offense taken Andrew. I actually enjoy it when people disagree with me, especially when they do in so in a polite manner and have arguments to back it up.
I think I view Bin Laden as less of a philanthropist than you do. I think he has some specific goals in mind and isn't out just to make the middle-east a more prosperous place.
He first off wants to remove the west and western influence from all Muslim lands. This includes any foreign troops. He wants to re-establish the Caliphate and impose Sharia law on all it's people. And, eventually, he wants to bring the rest of the world into a state of Dhiminitude. Ambitious goals to be sure, and he is unlikely to accomplish then, but it is what he wants and he will not be satisfied until he gets them.
The terrorist attacks are not so much designed to Bin Laden perpetrates however are not designed to directly achieve this goal however. They are, to a large degree, a fantasy enactment where Bin Laden and his cohorts get to be larger than life on the world stage. This essay explains what I am talking about better than I could.
In a sense you are right Andrew, in that the attention Bin Laden gets from his attacks builds him up and gives him a sense of purpose (I am using him in the singular, but many of his followers share this feeling, others probably are psychopaths along for the violence, and some doubtlessly are using the movement to accomplish actual political goals). However, it is my analysis that Bin Laden most enjoys the attacks themselves and his second enjoyment is weak responses that show him to be invulnerable and powerful in comparison.
You seem to think that Bin Laden is pleased that his training camps in Afghanistan have been destroyed and the we are rebuilding that nation and bringing western values and lifestyle to it. I find that to be a rather ludicrous proposition but I would be interested if you had any evidence for it.
I find your supposition that treating terrorists as nuissances will cause them to dry up to be ahistorical, that is exactly what we did during the 90s and the response by Bin Laden was to escalate and go after larger and greater targets.
You seem to feel that 9/11 is the limit, the worst attach that Al-Qaeda and it's affiliates could ever pull off, and if that were true, perhaps you could make an argument that we could afford to treat terrorism as a nuissance, although I would disagree even if I accepted that supposition. I fear however that there is a potential for much greater devastation, especially if Al-Qaeda is left in reletive peace to plan attacks.
The response to terrorism that I feel will work is a multi-pronged strategy. First, a serious effort to directly hunt them down, and kill them. Second, a serious effort to disrupt their logistics which includes such things as making sure no nation will allow them safe harbor and disrupting their financial resources. Third, a serious change in the middle east to empower the populous and promote econimic growth to weed out the root causes. This is not a quick process however, it will probably take a generation and wavering on our side could delay this even more, with possibly disasterous results.
I view terrorism as a very real and serious problem. The most pressing problem of our day. You apparently do not share that belief, something I feel you have in common with John Kerry, and that is why I hope he does not win the Presidency.
Let me state that I do not think you are 'evil' or 'unpatriotic'. I believe that you are trying to do what is right and solve the problems that you feel are most pressing, but I think you underestimate and misunderstand the threat.
You seem to think that Bin Laden is pleased that his training camps in Afghanistan have been destroyed and the we are rebuilding that nation and bringing western values and lifestyle to it. I find that to be a rather ludicrous proposition but I would be interested if you had any evidence for it..
I don't think that at all. In fact, bin Laden's personal goals are irrelevant to my argument. If you look at the history of fundamentalist Islamic sects, especially those analyses published pre-9/11, you discover two things. First, that the people of the Middle East feel that they're in shitty circumstances. And second, that Islamism is presented as a historically justified and hopeful alternative to the ineffective involvement of the West. That is to say that they increasingly see Western involvement and Westernization over the last 150 years as having been ineffective. On the whole, support of anti-Western sentiment is not really about religion or values--it's about quality of life and efficiency.
And from this vantage, bin Laden is really just a symbol. Individually, he acts on the principles of Islamist revolution, but as part of a social network he simply represents a demand for reform. Apart from being resonant with local history, it doesn't really matter what his vision is, because deep down most people in the Middle East don't care if they live in a modernist Republic or an Islamic Caliphate as long as their families get food, shelter, and personal satisfaction. And even if they don't realize it, and even if bin Laden doesn't realize it, what they really get from bin Laden is a means to get their case heard.
This may sound like psycho-babble, but it's a pattern we see all over the place. Take American politics. Say you're poor, and have a choice between two candidates A and B. Candidate A notices you and decides to make your plight a part of his campaign platform. He wants to help you out of the gutter. But both candidates want your vote, so soon after both offer means of helping you out, but because they want to look different from each other, they come up with two different plans. Candidate A offers to give you government checks by taxing the rich, and Candidate B offers to get you a job. Candidate A's plan looks more attractive to you, since you aren't thrilled about working, and your glad that he made your problem a campaign issue, so you go ahead and line up behind that candidate. In the next few months, there's a biting campaign where both candidates tear each other to shreds. Lo and behold, Candidate B wins. You start off by being disappointed of course, because you had less faith in his plans, and resented that he just took on your case for political reasons, but by the end of the candidate's term, you realize that his plan worked. You have a job, and you're no longer poor. All of a sudden you're all about this candidate and support him for re-election. Now, the real question behind this is, "What was your real motive in supporting candidate A?" Was it his plan? Sure, at the time, because it kinda looked better, and you were a little suspect of the other guy and his motives. But what you really wanted was a way for your problem to get solved, and that's what Candidate A brought up. Even though he didn't win, and his plan may have been insolvent, you still respect him for incorporating your issue into the both candidates campaign platform. He brought the issue up and you benefited from that, even if it wasn't in the way he promised. The end result is that next time your buddy has a problem, you're going to urge him to talk to a candidate, because candidates can get your issues fixed, even if they don't win.
Darting back to the Middle East now... terrorist leaders are like canidate A. For whatever personal reasons, selfish or noble, they take up your cause and make it a public issue. You may or may not buy into their methods and the face they put on, but the underlying reason you support them is because they have the power to set the agenda. And guess what? Starting at least as far back as the Israeli terrorism against British civilians, and culminating in the disproportionate reaction to 9/11, democracies the world over have demonstrated that terrorists are very effective at setting the agenda. So no matter what specific vision they promise, they earn support by being able to set the agenda and make some Arab's problem the number one issue for the world's greatest superpower. It isn't about specific ideology, it's about problem-solving.
I find your supposition that treating terrorists as nuissances will cause them to dry up to be ahistorical, that is exactly what we did during the 90s and the response by Bin Laden was to escalate and go after larger and greater targets. .
I agree that we didn't do a good enough job in the 90's. And while I don't know that Kerry believes the other stuff I'm rattling off, I think he believes that too. But the problem wasn't in the amount of mental attention the public, or even the Clinton administration, gave to terrorism, it was about the physical committment they applied. Clinton could have and should have made a quick incision into the Afghani mountains and taken out bin Laden well before 9/11. That was a failure of action, and I think any future president wouldn't hesitate to do that with terrorist threats. But does that kind of action depend on the kind of public and media attention that terrorism receives these days? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Presidents have gone after terrorists and terrorist networks for a long time before 9/11; that was Richard Clark's job after all... And is it necessary to wage giant $200B wars, occupations, and reconstructions in order to stop some impotent schmuck from killing 3 people with a car bomb in Chicago? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Plainly and simply, the threat just doesn't warrant that kind of response.
You seem to feel that 9/11 is the limit, the worst attach that Al-Qaeda and it's affiliates could ever pull off, and if that were true, perhaps you could make an argument that we could afford to treat terrorism as a nuissance, although I would disagree even if I accepted that supposition. I fear however that there is a potential for much greater devastation, especially if Al-Qaeda is left in reletive peace to plan attacks..
I don't think it's the limit, although I do think it was quite a stretch at the time. It took them almost a decade to pull it off, and while it caused a great deal of structural and psychological damage, it wasn't even that destructive considering the cost and effort. In fact, provided that we track WMD's (i.e. large deliverables, not just little sarin packets that will kill 4 people in a subway), anything a terrorist pulls off will be little worse than an office shooting. And considering that we've yet to wage a War on Office Lunatics, you must think that those are only a nuisance.
But to get back on topic: guess who is intent, and has always been intent, on tracking real WMD's? through comrpehensive efforts of non-proliferation? and by setting a good example? That's right: John Fucking Kerry. Not the guy who had a plan for Iraq ten years before he needed to justify it, not the guy who was against the Department of Homeland Security, not the guy who tabled the strong anti-terrorism plan until after 9/11, not the guy who was unable to keep North Korea's programs in stasis, not George W. Bush. You can say Bush received some holy enlightment on 9/12 if you want, and that it complements his born-again enlightment when he turned 40, but every time somebody says they trust this guy on fighting terrorism, or that they accept his interpretation of it, they've got to be stretching it. He's got the shittiest record to go off of, and you can only let him off the hook with "well, he learned!" so many times...
But lastly:
The response to terrorism that I feel will work is a multi-pronged strategy. First, a serious effort to directly hunt them down, and kill them. Second, a serious effort to disrupt their logistics which includes such things as making sure no nation will allow them safe harbor and disrupting their financial resources. Third, a serious change in the middle east to empower the populous and promote econimic growth to weed out the root causes. This is not a quick process however, it will probably take a generation and wavering on our side could delay this even more, with possibly disasterous results. .
I think everybody thinks this. Even I think this-- it's completely consistent with everything I've said. The grand illusion of this year's election is that terrorism is some kind of 'wedge issue.' Everyone agrees that we have to fight terrorism, and pretty much everyone agrees that we have to do it with a multi-pronged and unwavering approach. But does that mean that we have to make it the very essence of our lives? That we need to reshape the world into some neocon utopia? That we need to erode our civil liberties*?
*Patriot Act or otherwise, anti-terrorism efforts inherently run against the 1st (speech), 2nd (guns), and 4th (privacy) amendments. Any incursions we make on these rights better damned well be reflective of reality, not fantasy.
Wow. Yeah. I'm done now.
I will grant you completely that terrorism can be used to draw attention to political causes. Indeed this is probably its most 'effective' use. The pre-Israel israeli jews, the Irish, and the Palestinian have all proven that to varying degrees.
While ignoring terrorism might be a practicle way to defeat that tactic it is implausible to expect that to happen. It is also likely that trying to ignore political terrorists would only encourage them to greater acts of terror. I don't know if their is a 'good' solution to this problem, but I think that our (in a very general worldwide sense) fumbling mix of diplomacy, reprisals, and what not, as in regards to Palestinian terror for example, isn't actually too bad.
It is important to realize though that Bin Laden isn't a political terrorist in the conventional sense. His demands are so broad and so far fetched that there is no way to have a diplomatic componant at all. Indeed there is no real evidence that he even desires diplomatic compromise or expects capitulation. Rather, he expects complete victory via the Hand of God.
Andrew said:Clinton could have and should have made a quick incision into the Afghani mountains and taken out bin Laden well before 9/11. That was a failure of action, and I think any future president wouldn't hesitate to do that with terrorist threats.In hindsight it is obvious that he should have done something. I do not fault him for his failure however, as it was a threat almost all of us did not truely grasp. Because of that I don't think he could have accomplished that.
First off, it isn't as easy as you make it sound. The only way to 'get Bin Laden' and destroy the Afghani terror camps was pretty much what we did after 9/11. It would require massive air support, special forces, and assistance from the local oppossition tribes. Bin Laden had 1000s of armed terrorists and concealed his location well. Even with all that we did after 9/11 we still didn't get him (although some people think he is dead) and we don't know for sure where he is now. It is very doubtful that even before 9/11 a surgical strike would have succeeded in taking him out. In any event, the training camps were far more signifigant than Bin Laden himself.
Even if you figure that a surgical strike would have succeeded, such a thing would have required a lot to pull off. First, we would need to have search and rescue support based somewhere in the region. We ended up using Uzbekistan and Pakistan for that in the Afghan war but negotiating that pre-9-11 would be difficult. It probably would have been difficult post 9-11 aw well if those countries were not convinced that we were going to get rid of the Taliban as well.
Such a strike would be, undeniably, and Act of War against the nation we were invading. Commiting an Act of War, without fully following through, is a perilous venture.
Because of these factors I do not share your belief that 'any future president wouldn't hesitate to do that with terrorist threats'. Indeed, I expect that John Kerry would very much hesitate to do that. Right now the terrorists don't have any country that is supporting them like the Taliban was. However should that change, and I can think of a number of possible candidates, it will be necessary to use military force to destroy that sheltering government and those training facilities (unless diplomacy can convince the sheltering country to reverse course, an outcome that is more likely if they believe we will use military force if needed).
Such a pre-emptive action might well be unpopular with the world community. It may even be quite unpopular with the American people, or at least a large segment of them. It is likely in otherwords that it would fail to pass the 'global test'. I believe it would be needed and I do not trust John Kerry to do it.
In regards to Andrews comments on WMD proliferation, I agree that John Kerry SAYS he has a plan. He is good at saying that. Other than saying he will make this a priority, and claiming that President Bush has not done so, he has offered no details on why Russia would work faster or better with him than it has with the current administation.
I disagree strongly with the idea that we stop development on 'bunker busting nukes' or scale back our nuclear arsenal. We may well need bunker busting nukes to deal with the nuclear threat of North Korea or Iran. Further, I think that our massive nuclear superiority will do more to ensure world peace and convince other nations to not develop nuclear weapons than a smaller, less threatening stockpile would.
As to North Korea's nuclear development, that started during Clinton's watch, it was just discovered during the Bush administration. As we have previously discussed, I strongly believe that Kerry's plan for two-party talks would weaken our diplomatic efforts.
You did not mention Iran, but that is perhaps a nation that is more worrisome than Russia or North Korea in these regards. I suspect that we will either have to use force to get them to abandon their nuclear ambitions or convince them that we will use force if they do not abandon their plans. I expect that John Kerry will have a more difficult time with the latter because he is less likely to do the former.
Andrew: I have a series of quick points that I think torpedo your argument (leastwise for me they do).
1. On the subject of 5-year-olds. This analogy doesn't lead where you want it to. A 5-year-old starts by talking to you. If you ignore him, he starts screaming at you. If you ignore hime still, he sarts tugging at your sleeve. Then maybe he loads up the old spitball gun. What happens if you continue to ignore him? Does he go away? Hell, no. He drops the spitball gun and picks up a rock or a stick and whacks you. Ignore him doing that for long enough and he shows up at school with a shotgun in his trenchcoat. This is roughly what happened with terrorists in the 80s and 90s. We did, as you desire us to do now, ignore them. But they didn't go away; they escalated the violence until we couldn't possibly ignore them any more. Ignore them again now and they'll escalate the violence further. In short: the proper way to deal with a spitball-hurling toddler isn't to ignore him; its to turn and say "HEY! Knock that off!" The proper way to deal with terrorists isn't to ignore them; it's to turn, face, and kill them dead.
2. Constant soul-cracking random violence is anathema to liberty and democracy. You're worried about civil liberties. So am I. But two more 9/11-scale attacks (say, the destruction of the Sears Tower and a filled-to-capacity NFL stadium) and people will be lining up to throw away their civil liberties in exchange for their families' safety. We must confront and kill this enemy now, before such a dark time is upon us. Your idea that terrorism can't hurt us is wrong; it can, because enough of it will cause us to destroy our own system from the inside out. See Israel, for instance, which is not in what you'd call a libertarian dream state.
3. John Kerry has a plan for WMD? No shit he does. JFK has a plan for everydamnthing. Unfortunately, he also has a serious lack of political balls. Kerry wants to buy up Russia's plutonium? OK, where's he gonna put it? Yucca Mountain? Wait; isn't John Kerry against the Yucca mountain storage site this week, in order to pander to his green and Nevada constituencies? What to do, what to do? Many of us feel (and not for no reason) that all of Kerry's best-laid plans will be thrown out the window the moment the slightest political pressure is brought to bear on the man.
4. You say "you can only let him off the hook with "well, he learned!" so many times." You're not getting the point. To us pro-WOT types, the idea that 9/11 changed the President doesn't feel like an excuse; it feels like our own experience. Of course 9/11 changed him; it changed us, too. If it didn't change you, fine. But that's a fundamental difference between you and I which underlies our disagreemant. You don't get to unilaterally declare a limit to my willingness to believe that 9/11 changed George Bush.
5. The basic point you're trying to make seems to be that America would be better off if we the public let terrorism fade from our minds and allowed a certain professional antiterror class to handle it. There are two problems with that. First, note that that's what we did before 9/11 and it didn't work out so well for us. Second (and more importantly), remember that there are 300 million Americans. The public's knowledge base spans an immense domain: business, finance, technology, science, security, agriculture, violence and the prevention thereof, education, psychology, ... the list is virtually limitless. That's a shitload of information and brain power. A couple hundred antiterror guys, all of whom have basically the same military/law enforcement background, can't hold a candle to it. That means if you want creative, effective solutions to the terror problem the public should be thinking about it. In fact, I would argue that it's our responsibility as Americans to think, for a few minutes a week at least, about the national security problems we face and the best ways to solve them. If everyone does this (with special focus on how his/her particular expertise can help), we can have the problem licked in no time. If not, we'll get more of the same.
That means if you want creative, effective solutions to the terror problem the public should be thinking about it. In fact, I would argue that it's our responsibility as Americans to think, for a few minutes a week at least, about the national security problems we face and the best ways to solve them. If everyone does this (with special focus on how his/her particular expertise can help), we can have the problem licked in no time. If not, we'll get more of the same..
This tells me that I didn't express myself properly. I don't think that everybody besides some specialists should ignore terrorism. You've made a poor caricature of my position. I do think that treating terrorism as something qualititively more pressing than AIDS, drunk driving, poverty, under-regulation of pharmaceutical research and advertising, drug war side effects, or even domestic abuse, belies a mis-estimation of the threat relative to other concerns. I think it's worthwhile for everybody to occasional brainstorm solutions to all of these things and many more. I imagine you agree.
In fact, I don't even think that point is all that contentious. The biggest thing that prevents people from agreeing with it is their own impression of the threat of terrorism. My contention is that such an impression is flawed and that the flaw can be exposed through a critical analysis of: post-9/11 media coverage, the failure of our leadership at large to adequately wrestle against the immediate panic, a statistical (not speculative) analysis of terrorism's net impact, and the history of terrorism and Islamist thought. You, as many, disagree.
And I don't have your post handy now, but let me also answer your analogy of the five year old, since it may help you understand what I've been saying:
I recommend knocking the kid out with the back of your hand when he even starts to think about bugging you. And I'll juxtapose this against what I think the public has opted to do: tell everyone to suspend their business while giving the kid a public lynching. He's a fricking five year old! He doesn't deserve a public lynching nor the attention of the whole town--all he merits is a swift kick in the face to shut him up.
Andrew: You say
I do think that treating terrorism as something qualititively more pressing than AIDS...
...
My contention is that such an impression is flawed and that the flaw can be exposed through a critical analysis of: post-9/11 media coverage, the failure of our leadership at large to adequately wrestle against the immediate panic, a statistical (not speculative) analysis of terrorism's net impact, and the history of terrorism and Islamist thought.
It's funny you should mention AIDS. AIDS and HIV programs, like terrorism, attract what you might be tempted to call undue attention. Why? It's the airline hypothesis.
You fly, right? And I presume you're happy that the FAA has hugely stringent rules for flying. Commercial pilots require hundreds of hours of training that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Aircraft maintenance is insanely rigorous. Air traffic is stricty controlled; even one violation can cause a pilots license to be revoked permanently. Security at airports is high relative to the rest of the country. You are, like most of us, happy about all this, right? Even though it adds immense costs to air travel in the US? OK; but there's a catch.
The catch: air travel is very, very safe. Much more so, statistically speaking, than highway travel, smoking, or even eating too many cheeseburgers. So one might say the problem (air crashes) is drawing attention (security, maintenance, traffic control, pilot creds, etc.) far out of proportion to the threat it actually poses. Why is that?
There are two forces at work here. One is the scare effect you're talking about. Air crashes are horrific, almost uniformly fatal, and unlike car accidents outside the control of the vast majority of people who die in them. That scares the mess out of folks, as we say down South. Because of this visceral fear brought on by the idea of being in an air crash, people's peace of mind demands that we take exceptional caution to avoid air crashes. Thus, the "misallocation" of resources to air safety, which (all else being equal) would be better spent on the more perilous highway transport system.
The other force is more important, and may go to the heart of our disagreement (I'm not sure yet). That force is causal: air traffic is as statistically safe as it is precisely because we spend so much time, energy, and money on it. Are the resources spent far out of proportion to the frequency of accidents? Yes. Does that mean we should expend less resources? No. Because the moment we start spending fewer resources, the frequency of accidents will go up. Lives will be lost.
So, might there be some "optimum" level of air safety expenditure which brings the "cost per death" number in line with other forms of travel? Sure. Do we want to find it? No. The cost can be borne where it is, and the few extra lives saved are well worth it (life being priceless and all that).
AIDS is the same way. Per death, AIDS funding is an order of magnitude higher than any other disease. Why? For the same two reasons: visceral fear of dying of AIDS (which is horrific) and a causal relationship between the higher funding rate and the lower death rate. Could we bring the "cost per death" rate for AIDS in line with other diseases? Sure. Will we? No. The cost can be borne where it is, and the few extra lives saved are well worth it (life being priceless and all that).
Terrorism is yet another such case. Per death, we're spending much more time and energy and brianpower than seems appropriate. But the same two forces are at play: a visceral response to the idea of bein incinerated in an office building (a perfectly natural response that does not warrant your derision in any way) and a causal relationship between the high resource expenditure and the low death rate. Might we be able to optimize the spending to get the "cost per death" rate in line with other problems? Sure. Will we? No. The cost can be borne where it is, and the few extra lives saved are well worth it (life being priceless and all that).
About that five-year-old...the metaphor is limited here...hmmm. Here, the kid is terrorism and "you" are the US. Whether you know it or not, when you turn to wallop the kid you're stopping your business for a moment to invest resources in doing that. That's what we're doing now. On a historical scale, the time we're putting into this problem is very limited. It seems like a lot to us bloggers, because we spend a couple hours a day writing about it. But all told the time we as a nation spend on terrorism (be that thinking, talking, writing about it, paying for the WOT, or whatever) is a very, very small fraction of total time and attention. Hell, we as a nation spend more time and energy worrying about Survivor than we do about terrorism. That's hardly "stopping the whole town for a public lynching."
Post a Comment
<< Home