I wonder if the TSA airport security is all just misdirection.
It's so clearly theater, and particularly the most recent set of regulations being so obviously ineffectual and just stupid, that it can't be serious. At the same time, there are so many better targets that remain unprotected: energy and communication transmission hubs, bridges and tunnels, malls and arenas, etc.
Can it be that Homeland Security is fully aware that what they're doing to air travel is stupid, but it's all designed to keep attention tuned there? Like a magician that's directing attention away from the real trick, DHS wants to keep the terrorists from thinking about the "better" targets. They keep all of the debate focused on air travel, so alternate ideas aren't discussed and incubated.
I'm start to believe that DHS has chosen air travel as cannon fodder, intentionally concentrating terrorist attention there, in order to keep everything else safe. It's kind of like the wildebeests at the watering hole. As long as the lion is eating the one weak animal (air travel) the rest of the herd (American infrastructure and industry) is safe.
I have a hard time believing this, as it isn't just US air travel which is hit by the stupidity. All over the world we are suffering from this and I can't see the air industry taking to being a sacrificial cow, without protesting about it.
As usual, missing is from this is any analysis about causes of terrorism, which seems to have gone missing in most/all(?) discussions about terrorism these days. They are only talking about how to deal with the symptoms not the causes. That will never solve the situation, only dampen some of the symptoms, at best.
Terrorism is a tactic. It is nonsensical to talk about the causes of superior firepower, the causes of ambush, or the causes of propaganda.
Islamic Fundamentalism is an ideology. It is likewise nonsensical to talk about the causes of Buddhism, socialism, or libertarianism.
But just for kicks, in your view, what exactly are the "causes" of terrorism? They are central to the claim you are making, but you don't say what they are. Why?
i would guess that the original poster meant something like "we need to look at what causes people to use terrorism". just like you might ask "why do people think socialism is a good idea?" or "why do people become islamic fundamentalists?"
to be honest, it's hard to see how you can not understand what was meant, unless you're just trying to be difficult.
it's hard to see how you can not understand what was meant
And yet, you're the second poster on this topic to mention what is meant without being explicit about it. As if everyone is already supposed to know the one right answer to this very complicated question.
I think that this kind of carefully circumscribed rhetoric makes people think that opinion on such questions is less diverse than it really is. The result is dull posturing and the inevitable partition into camps with binary opposite positions, incapable of compromise or a shift of perspective.
So. I gave my opinion on the causes of Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism above. What's yours?
what do you not understand? what can i be more explicit about? if "terrorism" is a problem, then it seems like it would be a pretty smart idea to look at the causes. is that better? i don't know how to make it clearer.
or are you asking me to answer the questions i raised? how on earth would i know? but either someone has done the work and found out, or the work could be done.
With sincerity, I'm not looking for a fight. Just a frank exchange of views.
I agree it would be nice to prevent Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism by understanding its causes, but that approach doesn't seem likely to work. My opinion, as above, is that the thoughts of suicide murderers will be messy, hard to understand, specific to individuals, and not terribly useful for preventing terrorism. This is because people are complicated, and because, legally and practically, suicide bombers are crazy. They're a threat to themselves and others.
I don't think there's any coherent argument against trying to understand the psychology of terrorism, but I find the enthusiasm for that course of action slightly ominous. This is an armchair discussion for me, and I suspect most people here, so the line between "Trying to Understand" and just wishing the problem would go away without our doing anything about it looks pretty thin.
That mindset has to be fought, in spite of the stupid posturing and overreaction after 9/11, because it's possible to overcompensate. If a bunch of murderous lunatics jump onto the world stage by killing a few thousand people and then claim they're the Next Great Existential Threat to the USA, it's not right to ignore them because they don't live up their own hype.
i agree that life is complicated. but, at the same time, i think there are more similarities than differences in the attacks so far. for example, i understand that engineers are way over-represented amongst bombers. i have no idea what that means, but if it's not some strange statistical fluke then it's evidence that there is some commonality.
and i don't disagree with what you're saying about lunatics jumping on a bandwagon. as far as i'm concerned that's quite possible - but that doesn't mean you can't ask questions about what makes bandwagons work. for example, completely random thought: if the usa became much more of a federation, and emphasised the role of central government much less, then perhaps "america" as a target becomes less attractive (much like people don't try to "attack europe" to anything like the same degree - and when it does happen it's interpreted largely as an attack on american allies).
maybe the above are really stupid ideas. it wouldn't surprise me - i thought of them in 5 minutes. but i am seriously starting to worry that no-one at all is brainstorimg about this where it matters.
another example, that got me a pile of downvotes in another thread, is american funding of israel. the usa pays a huge amount to israel and seems to be getting pretty poor value for money: the us president asks them to do something and they just laugh in his face. again this seems to be entrenched ideas (big government if you like) resisting market forces - wouldn't you get more security per dollar spending that money on better airport screening?
i'm rambling and drifting off topic here, but my more general point is that "america" doesn't seem to be thinking much at all. and i think there should be a lot more thinking - that includes but is in no way limited to the minds of terrorists....
edit: and to put that in perspective, i don't think it's sufficient to just bullshit (as i have done above). spend some money and study the problem. can't some kind of science be used here rather than the "armchair discussions" you mention? this is why i avoided putting forward ideas earlier in this thread - because i don't know the answers. what worries me is people are not looking for answers because they're not even bothering to ask questions, and/or they don't think answers can be found. if as much effort was put into the minds of terrorists as was put into the minds of consumers.... why is selling us crap that we don't need a science, but saving the world just a big debate?
I think a lot of the problem is that electorates "decide" via different algorithms than the ones used by individuals. Our brains choke off stupid and irrelevant thoughts. But in politics, every moronic idea under the sun will attract some little constituency who think it's the best. thing. ev4r. and who will shout about it at the top of their lungs to anyone who will listen. Sometimes, they even win everyone over. Other times, they're right.
And let's not even get started on our menagerie of paid and semi-professional shills.
why is selling us crap that we don't need a science, but saving the world just a big debate?
Maybe if we made debate into a science? There are better methods for aggregating information and making group decisions than the loud-as-you-can model we're using now. I've even done some thinking about how to build startups around
Meddling. We meddle in other people's affairs (in the Middle East). Iran and the Shah, where we supported a brutal dictator. We give money to many oppressive governments in the Middle East.
Of course, the thing that increase terrorism the most was invading Iraq when Bin Laden was in Afghanistan. The second thing was invading a country (Afghanistan), rather than just sending in a squad to arrest Bin Laden.
We are seen in the Middle East as bullies that only care about oil. This is grist for the mill of terrorism, where we setup ourselves as an easy target.
> We are seen in the Middle East as bullies that only care about oil.
Which doesn't make any sense.
If we only cared about oil, we'd occupy a couple of oil fields, protect the pipelines and shipping, and ignore everything else.
And, if we did that, the folks who actually get a large fraction of their oil from the middle east would do likewise. (Yes, I know that oil is fungible, but that's only because US policy makes it so. The US could easily stop oil from leaving the Americas, which is where the US gets the vast majority of its oil - thanks Canada and Mexico - and let the rest of the world fend for itself.)
The French have historically run a fairly brutal occupation.
the thing that increased terrorism the most was invading Iraq...
9/11, USS Cole, Kenyan/Tanzanian Embassies?
Also, while the war in Iraq has not made the US popular in the region, it has given the people of the Middle East a very good look at the practice of terrorism. Surveys show that groups like Al Qaeda have suffered an even greater loss of esteem than the US has:
We give money to many oppressive governments in the Middle East.
This was the theme of GWB's second inaugural address. Thanks to him, Iraq's government is now the most liberal in the region. The idea was to create pressure for change in neighboring countries like Syria and especially Iran. That nobody was ecstatic about the Stalinesque Hussein regime's ouster and subsequent replacement with a constitutional democracy is a bright sign that "oppression" is a lot more complicated than the victim-villain narrative that predominates in the media and public discourse.
Did I mention that Israel is one of the world's most open societies if you ignore all the stuff they do to the Palestinians?
The point is that this issue is full of contradictions. But it's hard to see how the oppression of the Middle East's huddled masses would elicit murderous, self-immolating rage from the son of a Nigerian bank chairman living at a tony London boarding school (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab), or an Egyptian studying architecture at a German university (Mohammed Atta).
We are seen in the Middle East as bullies that only care about oil. This is grist for the mill of terrorism, where we setup ourselves as an easy target.
Superpowers are not nice. But they are even less popular than they are nice. They get blamed for all the good they could do but don't, doubly blamed for their screwups, triply blamed for their vices. And when they do something right, nobody pays attention:
So I absolutely agree that the US has a big PR problem in the Middle East that to some extent is structural and can't be gotten rid of. But that doesn't really tell us much. Any project undertaken by an actor as big as the US is going to be a mixed bag. Because of the PR problem, people will see the bad and not the good, making the US less popular and giving it more of a PR problem.
I think people stop thinking about problems like terrorism too early. They quit in a funny way though. Rather than just declaring the problem impossible, people tend to settle on some really unrealistic solution that will never fly in the real world, and then complain that it isn't happening.
So for example, people go on about how the US should consume less oil (which would add major unemployment to the region's problems), stop backing Israel (which would destroy trust of other allies, threaten a high-tech trading partner, free up Syria and Hezbollah, and piss off a chunk of the Florida electorate), or stop being a superpower (Riiight).
Can I weigh in with "myths about the myths"? Cause this article is loaded with them.
Terrorism is the gravest threat facing the American people -- Americans are at far greater risk of being killed in accidents or by viruses than by acts of terrorism
Terrorism is the gravest threat facing the American people today because small numbers of people acting violently have the ability to sway a populace to do irrational things. That's why it's an existential threat, not because you count up dead people one way or another (damn, I get tired of this old chestnut)
* When it comes to preventing terrorism, the only real defense is a good offense. -- But offense has its limits...an emphasis on offense has often come at the expense of investing in effective defensive measures, such as maintaining quality watch lists,"
The problem here is that the magical amulet that keeps bears away is really beyond questioning. Or in other words we don't know what didn't happen because we took certain actions. Obviously strategies that are both totally offense or totally defense are going to miss attributes from the opposite tact. But nobody has suggest or is implementing strategies that are one way or the other. Best you can say is that there is an opinion call involved here, one way or the other, and that there's probably not a right and wrong in the traditional sense.
I could go on, but the article is just bad. Bad, bad. I got to this point and dang if he isn't digging out Bush as a strawman to kick around some.
Terrorism is a complicated subject. In a lot of ways it's just rough-and-tumble politics taken to the logical next stage -- blowing up kids in a bus to get politicians to do what you want. Articles that have the words "myth" and "terrorism" are almost guaranteed to contain exaggerations and oversimplifications.
Terrorism is the gravest threat facing the American people today because small numbers of people acting violently have the ability to sway a populace to do irrational things.
Just to be sure I'm reading you correctly, I think you're saying that you _agree_ that yes, terrorism is the gravest threat facing the US right now. Furthermore, the reason that it's the gravest threat is because a few terrorists "have the ability to sway a populace to do irrational things".
If so: horse hockey.
As to the first part, a person's odds of being personally affected by terrorism are infinitesimal, especially if you don't live in NYC, Washington, LA, or San Fran.
Yes, it only takes a few terrorists to commit an attack. But how we react to it is entirely up to us; they have no power to "sway" us into irrational acts--that has been purely the choice of our leaders and media, who have used the fear of terrorism as a way to build their own powerbase and advance their own agendas. I do not know ONE SINGLE private citizen who is actually afraid of terrorists, despite having zero confidence in our TSA and security procedures.
"As to the first part, a person's odds of being personally affected by terrorism are infinitesimal, especially if you don't live in NYC, Washington, LA, or San Fran."
The OP was claiming that it is incorrect to state, as the article does, that "effects of terrorism" == body count.
Any time I fly I suffer the effects of terrorism because I'm now forced to spend an extra few hours engaged in security theater. I get additional delays driving along the US southern boarder as well. I have politicians looking to restrict my means of expression because of supposed fears of terrorism.
Now, even granting all that, I don't know that this is the gravest threat facing the USA, but the opportunistic reactions to terrorism certainly is a major problem that affects people daily.
I'm personally affected by terrorism every time I cannot bring a bottle onto a plane or have to go through any sort of needlessly onerous procedure in the name of protecting us from the terrorists. Being killed by a bomb is just a minor part of terrorism.
a person's odds of being personally affected by terrorism are infinitesimal, especially if you don't live in NYC, Washington, LA, of San Fran.
The attack that took place 7 days ago targeted Detroit International Airport.
that has been purely the choice of our leaders and media, who have used the fear of terrorism to build their own powerbase and advance their own agendas.
In other words, political and opinion leaders have responded to terrorism rationally, advancing their own interests while plausibly satisfying their respective job descriptions. Expecting them to suddenly ignore their goals and incentive structures is corrosive and naive. Yes, even if those incentives were altered by violent bad actors. Yes, even if the manipulation is obvious.
I do not know ONE SINGLE private citizen
This is a statement about you and your circle of acquaintances. For information about the body politic, I'll take the word of the Gallup Organization:
Despite everything else that happened in 2009, 40% of people were still worried about terrorism before the bombing attempt. Now that number isn't going to drop below 50% for a long time.
Who's going to make a pariah of himself by telling the public that it's being irrational?
It's so clearly theater, and particularly the most recent set of regulations being so obviously ineffectual and just stupid, that it can't be serious. At the same time, there are so many better targets that remain unprotected: energy and communication transmission hubs, bridges and tunnels, malls and arenas, etc.
Can it be that Homeland Security is fully aware that what they're doing to air travel is stupid, but it's all designed to keep attention tuned there? Like a magician that's directing attention away from the real trick, DHS wants to keep the terrorists from thinking about the "better" targets. They keep all of the debate focused on air travel, so alternate ideas aren't discussed and incubated.
I'm start to believe that DHS has chosen air travel as cannon fodder, intentionally concentrating terrorist attention there, in order to keep everything else safe. It's kind of like the wildebeests at the watering hole. As long as the lion is eating the one weak animal (air travel) the rest of the herd (American infrastructure and industry) is safe.