Safety From Insanity

~ Laura

Terrorism is the top issue amongst voters this year. Not the war. Not the economy. Not health care. But who seems more likely to protect us against dirty nukes in the local mall.

It amazes me that this issue is on the forefront of voter’s minds, since I haven’t heard that much discussion or debate about the best means to ensure safety from insanity. People aren’t choosing between different anti-terrorism proposals, but which candidate appears tougher. But, you know, politics is more about perception than reality.

In an effort to get John Kerry to STOP KILLING THE DUCKS, let’s try to get away from perceptions of toughness and closer to a real policy discussion:

Different methods to protect against terror:

1. Add Troops to Sensitive Areas. Kerry has pointed out the weakness of our ports and proposed adding troops there. Sure, I don’t think it would hurt, but I have marched right past hundreds of soldiers in the subways and could have easily unleashed amageddon right in front of them.

2. Snoop and Spy or The John Ashcroft method. Stop all dark skinned people in airports and strip search them all. Read e-mails and open letters. Probably effective, but entirely unacceptable.

3. Bomb the Hell Out of Them All. I would say that this is Bush’s method, but I’m not sure that stopping terrorism is the reason that we’re in Iraq. Could be effective if you get all the smart terrorists, but probably more likely to create hundreds of new terrorists.

4. Close our borders. Read an interesting op-ed by Mike Kelley this weekend, who suggested that this was the best method to ensure our safety. Start funding INS and enable them to boot out all foreigners with lapsed visas. Might be somewhat effective. 14 of the 9/11 terrorists were here illegally. But, as Kelley points out, this proposal is politically distasteful. Politicians don’t want to offend Latinos or the farmers who employ migrant laborers.

5. The Asylum Method. Put all the loonies in one or two countries and build a brick wall around them. Shoot anyone who tries to leave. Tempting, but again probably an ethical no-no.

6. The Utopian Model. Start pumping a lot of money into education and capital improvements in third world nations, so that the children of terrorists will have too much to lose to strap a bomb to their chest and step onto a crowded bus.

7. Learn to Live With It. Israel.

Now for the love of God, LEAVE THE DUCKS ALONE!

Published by Laura

11 thoughts on “Safety From Insanity”

  1. well, in response to #3, Bomb the Hell, we have some informed opinion (this is from a Washington Times article at the time of his interrogation):
    “Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda’s purported operations chief, has told U.S. interrogators that the group had been planning attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terror strikes.
    Those plans were aborted mainly because of the decisive U.S. response to the New York and Washington attacks, which disrupted the terrorist organization’s plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, according to transcripts of his conversations with interrogators.
    ….
    But the terrorists seem to have been surprised by the strength of the American reaction to the September 11 attacks.
    “Afterwards, we never got time to catch our breath, we were immediately on the run,” Mohammed is quoted as saying.
    Al Qaeda’s communications network was severely disrupted, he said. Operatives could no longer use satellite phones and had to rely on couriers, although they continued to use Internet chat rooms.
    “Before September 11, we could dispatch operatives with the expectation of follow-up contact, but after October 7 [when U.S. bombing started in Afghanistan], that changed 180 degrees. There was no longer a war room … and operatives had more autonomy.” ”
    This kind of thing has made me a believer in #3. And his apparent lack of enthusiasm for #3 is the biggest thing I have against John Kerry. He really does seem to think if you have the right Men In Suits initial an agreement that the world will get better and you can sleep at night. The #6 Utopian Model would look a lot better if the Sept 11 pilots had not been uniformly middle class guys, who you would think would have a lot to lose.

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  2. Well, bombing Afganistan might have been the right thing to do because that’s where the terrorist organizations were located. But Iraq? I’m voting for the Utopian method myself. Even if the 9/11 pilots were middle class, I think having a well-educated, economically stable community sucks out the momementum behind the effort. It’s harder to blow yourself up when there’s not a cheering crowd behind you.

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  3. Interesting… I’m a volunteer with moveon.org and the Leave No Voter Behind effort. In the door-to-door canvassing we did in my Denver neighborhood, terrorism was the LEAST important issue in the election: Iraq and economy were listed as the most important, followed in no particular order by health care, social security and education.
    I wonder if the reason is simply regional — people in/near NYC having had a whole different experience of terrorism than us in the west…
    Posted by: dee at October 29, 2004 07:46 PM

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  4. Your #5 (“The Asylum Method: Put all the loonies in one or two countries and build a brick wall around them”) is entirely naive and (as naivete always is) simplistic. How do we identify these “loonies”? And even if we could identify and apprehend each and every one of them (between 60,000 and 100,000 al Qaeda have been trained in their Afghanistan camps alone), wouldn’t it make more sense to incarcerate them in, say, an asylum? (Most of Texas is butt-ugly and empty – I say put them there.)
    But of course jihadists have metastisized manifold since the invasion of Iraq. Nowadays we’re talking about millions of jihadim – yes, millions – thanks to W. And they’re located not only in every Muslim country from Morocco to Indonesia, but all over the world. Iceland may be safe … or maybe not.
    This option is “tempting” only to someone who has no clue about what we’re up against.
    The solutions to al Qaeda, terrorism and violent religious fundamentalism cannot be summarized as a set of bullets. As John Kerry has pointed out, the solution will incorporate military, juridical and diplomatic efforts in concert with other nations. Bush has largely botched the first, completely botched the second (not one of the thousands we’ve arrested has been found guilty of anything terrorism-related), and ignored the third.
    Sorry about the ducks, but if you don’t like hunting, pass a law. Just make sure it also covers Vice Presidents who “hunt” caged pheasant.
    I know I sound huffy, but I do like your blog, and you.
    NB: The Washington “Moonie” Times is an occasional source of administration leaks, but rarely a reliable source of news. Even Al Jazeera is less distorted.

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  5. In practice, any successful policy is going to be a mix of all (or most all) of these. It’s worth looking at what Britain, France and Spain have done (against the IRA, Algerians and ETA) as well as the Israeli experience.
    All three put troops where it made sense. All three gave their surveillance guys/political police more leeway (it was a bad time to be Irish in Britain at the height of the provos’ campaign). Britain, at least, tightened its borders. All three tried to make joining the terrorists less eligible. All three managed to find ways to live with terrorist attacks.
    That none of them bombed terrorist camps was due only to the fact that their terrorists didn’t have camps.

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  6. bob, I was just kidding about the ducks.
    re: the suggestions to put all the loonies in one place. I was just throwing out all the options, even the bad ones, to get conversation going. Some have suggested that this is what Israel is doing with the Palentinians. Putting them all in Gaza and surrounding the place with barbed wire.
    I don’t know what the right answer is. I just was curious what the readers had to say.

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  7. It’s strange that you’ve missed out the obvious and only successful approach — deal with the legitimate grievances of the people who frighten you so much. I know the price is high. For example you might have to admit some mistakes, take a critical look at what Israel’s been up to behind your back and make a serious effort to wean the United States off its addiction to Middle East oil. It might mean that you, and the media which supposedly informs you, have to listen to people with unfamiliar ideas and cultures. You might have to think twice before you allow politicians to frighten you with ‘terrorism’ nightmares. Believe me, people all over the world are pretty much the same and it is most unusual for the weak to attack the strong unless they have a GOOD REASON, or at least if they think they have a good reason. The usual pattern is for the strong to attack the weak to enslave them or steal what little they have. But that isn’t news, is it? It certainly wouldn’t frighten someone living in a New Jersey suburb, would it? The solutions you propose are unimaginative and futile. You need to do some homework.

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