What the Terrorists Want

I know I link Bruce Schneier an awful lot on this blog, but his recent essay, entitled "What the Terrorists Want" is excellent. My favourite point that he makes (and it is something that I have been trying to say for a while now, but he states it perfectly) is this:

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.

Folks, there are three things that we must do to beat terrorism:

1. Good old fashioned police work. Not Orwellian mass surveillance, but careful investigation.


2. The public must refuse to be terrorised. Unless you live in Iraq, you are probably much more likely to be struck by lightning than die in or even be caught up in a terrorist attack. Think about how many people live in the world. 6.5 billion as of this writing, according to the US Census Bureau. Now how many people die each year in terrorist attacks? I dunno, but I am willing to bet it is less than a million. If my off-the-cuff numbers are even accurate within an order of magnitude, that would mean that worldwide, anyone's chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are 0.01%. Pretty unlikely, I would say. So treat terrorism like you treat the threat of being crushed by a falling anvil: not likely to occur, unless your name is Wile E. Coyote.


3. Countries like the United States and the United Kingdom need to undertake a deep re-examination of their foreign policy, asking important questions like: "Are our goals worth the cost of radicalising disenfranchised members of one of the world's major religions?", "Would alternative fuel research that has the potential to make oil less politically important be a good thing?", and "Can democracy be spread through the barrel of a gun?"

Oh yeah, and a forth item: we must, as voters, punish politicians who use terrorism as a political tool. Again from Schneier (albeit from a different post on his blog):

What pisses me off most is [that there was no imminent threat]. By arresting the conspirators early, the police squandered the chance to learn more about the network and arrest more of them -- and to present a less flimsy case. There have been many news reports detailing how the U.S. pressured the UK government to make the arrests sooner, possibly out of political motivations. (And then Scotland Yard got annoyed at the U.S. leaking plot details to the press, hampering their case.)