5 years after 9/11, someone finally sums up what this war on "terra"
should really be all about:
Bruce Schneier
Security Expert
August 24, 2006
I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.
The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a
political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists
kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up
planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just
tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions
of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The
real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the
act.
And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.
We're all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects
in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive
attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been
trumpeting the story ever since.
In truth, it's doubtful that their plan would have succeeded; chemists
have been debunking the idea since it became public. Certainly the
suspects were a long way off from trying: None had bought airline
tickets, and some didn't even have passports.
Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers' perspective, the
explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause
terror, and in that they've succeeded.
Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up 10
planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on
carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures,
political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people
panicked. To a lesser degree, that's basically what's happening right
now.
Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a
campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories
about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share
that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the
terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror.
(I am not saying that the politicians and press are terrorists, or that
they share any of the blame for terrorist attacks. I'm not that stupid.
But the subject of terrorism is more complex than it appears, and
understanding its various causes and effects are vital for
understanding how to best deal with it.)
The implausible plots and false alarms actually hurt us in two ways.
Not only do they increase the level of fear, but they also waste time
and resources that could be better spent fighting the real threats and
increasing actual security. I'll bet the terrorists are laughing at us.
Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British
government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the
TSA and its European counterparts didn't engage in pointless
airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the
press didn't write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn't
use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we'd reacted
that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.
It's time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not
mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things
our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them
involving intelligence and investigation -- and not focusing on
specific plots.
But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to
be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand
together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion
Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about
320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them
not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to
ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to
advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.
The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our
job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face,
and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight
those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties
and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn't make us any
safer.
This essay originally appeared on Wired.com.
--
"In the future you may be here, but will your dreams?"
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