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Seriously, I think some people are forgetting how the rules used to be after 9/11, and how they have changed since then. It used to be, for example, that you could not take a disposable razor on board, but now they are allowed after inspection.

There was a reason why restrictions were so tight at first… they didn’t want to take any chances on something happening. Once security personnel were trained in what to look for, the restrictions were modified.

Same thing here… you aren’t going to be banned forever from having a bottle of water on the plane. Once security personnel know how to look for things such as false bottoms and knowing what particular liquids smell like, you will be allowed to have a bottle of water after inspection. Or they’ll allow you to buy water in the presence of a gate agent.

Restrictions will almost certainly have to be modified in certain instances, such as medicines people need to take at certain times. Airlines aren’t going to want to lose business and they’ll pressure the government to step things up in terms of training security personnel what to look for.

It will just take time to get to that point, that’s all.

That seems to be a pretty good definition of “bully”.

Yeah, and appropriate too!

I guess most of the bullys I am familiar with waren’t really into the whole talking thing anyway. They were more into the hitting thing. It is difficult to not care about being kneed in the nuts.

Of course we should be vigilant, not paranoid.

Vigilence means basically appropriate levels of awareness and concern, paranoia is inappropriate levels of concern. Saying we should be vigilant, not paranoid though really doesn’t give us any good guidlines on what to do. Its sort of like if you were to ask me how to get better scores on a test and I said, answer the questions right. While it is true, it is also not very useful.

Even proper levels of vigilance will sometimes be incorrect though. One can easily imagine innocent scenarios that look quite dangerous. In hindsight, the difference is obvious, but it isn’t always on the spot.

Regardless of that, it doesn’t seem at all obvious to me that the terrorists would have a preference on whether we were vigilent or paranoid. I can imagine a preference for us not being vigilent enough as it would make their plots easier to accomplish. I can imagine a prefence for us being so afraid we cave into their demands, but being paranoid and yet still unwilling to do what they want us to do doesn;t help them any.

As I have stated repeatedly, there may be other reasons (and there are certainly plenty) to not be paranoid. Paranoia about doing what the terrorists want isn’t one of them.

Vigilance, not paranoia.

Regardless, I don’t see how your story says ignoring them solves the problem. You said that it didn’t stop until you stopped talking to them, a teacher caught one of them, and you stepped on a girls toe. Given the variety of things that happened, it seems the conclusion that stopping was a result of you not talking to them seems odd.

I have never observed, both for myself or for others that the ‘ignore them and hope they go away’ strategy works.

In any event, we have tried that with terrorists, before 9-11 that is mostly what they did. Their response was escallation until it couldn’t be ignored. Whether or not bully’s are like this is probably not relevant if we know that ‘ignore them’ won’t work for terrorists.

Butterfly bandages didn’t stop him from picking on me. He just got his girlfriend in on the deal, who spread rumors about me at school which got all the other bullies wanting to pick on me during recess too.

The bullying didn’t stop until I stopped talking to them in 7th grade after a girl pulled my hair in the hallway and called me another name which I will not repeat on your blog. She was caught by a teacher after I stepped on her toes with the heel of my pump to get her to let go of my hair.

My school yard obviously wasn’t as nice as yours, but I do hear that girls tend to be a heck of a lot meaner than boys. I suppose different school yards reveal different life lessons.

The goal of terrorism is NOT to terrorize. We are not fighting Freddy Krugar who feeds on fear here. Terrorism is a tactic used to create fear that motivate specific actions. If they create fear, but that fear doesn’t motivate the actions that they want, then their terrorism failed, no matter how scared the people being terrorized are.

n small world terms, you fight the schoolyard bully, whose only real goal is to get a rise out of you, by acting like he doesn’t exist. That doesn’t mean you don’t avoid his corner of the playground and try to avoid getting hurt, but if he talks to you, you simply do not talk back. Eventually, he gives up on trying to goad you into doing something stupid and leaves you alone.

Not in any schoolyard I have ever been on. If you don’t react to a bully they do not get bored, they do not leave you alone.

They escallate.

Instead of taunts it becomes shoves. Instead of shoves it becomes blows. They will not tire of this. Eventually they will find something you will react to.

This is indeed quite similar to how terror groups behave. If an blowing up an embassy or nearly sinking a ship doesn’t work, they will fly planes into buildings. Eventually, they will find something that is impossible to ignore.

There are ways to deal with the schoolyard bully. If you can make it tough enough to get to you they might find someone else to pick on. This is somewhat unreliable though. The best way to deal with the bully is usually to fight. Fight and win and they will usually stop. Fight and lose and they will still usually stop if you put up enough of a fight.

Here of course the analogy breaks down somewhat. We aren’t dealing with a bully, we are dealing with many, and they arn’t picking on a single person, but a lot of people whenever they can. And of course unlike a bully, they are weak and can only attack from the shadows.

All I said in this post, and what I am saying again is that ’saying it is what the terrorists what’ is generally not correct reason for oppossing or not oppossing a given security measure.

For example, lets take the recent British liquid bomb plotters. All indications are that their goal was to convince the western powers to stay out of traditionally Muslim lands. Their goal was not a jihad against liquid beverages on airplanes. Banning sports drinks on planes will not ‘give the terrorists what they want.’

That is not to say that banning these drinks is a good idea. There are various ways to accomplish the same goals. We could, for example, forbid any Muslims from flying on planes. That would probably work fairly well. We could accept that if we don’t do anything, the next liquid bomb attempt might succeed and people will die, but we could still enjoy our delicious beverages. We could of course leave Iraq and any other Muslim nation (this would be giving them what they want) and hope that our compliance would end the threat. We could invest in technology that would detect these substances. We could stop inspecting for conventional bombs because if it is easy to smuggle conventional bombs on a plane no one would use liquid explosives.

All of these reactions have positives and negatives. In only one case, leaving Iraq, would a valid negative be ‘giving the terrorists what they want.’

It’s really very simple and Dave, you are making it out to be far more complex than it is. The goal of terrorism is to terrorize. We’re not talking about specific terrorist groups here, I’m not referring Al Qaeda or Hezbollah. I mean terrorism in general.

When people get so scared that they alter their daily routines, terrorism succeeds because it has achieved its goal of causing terror.

That’s all there is to it.

In small world terms, you fight the schoolyard bully, whose only real goal is to get a rise out of you, by acting like he doesn’t exist. That doesn’t mean you don’t avoid his corner of the playground and try to avoid getting hurt, but if he talks to you, you simply do not talk back. Eventually, he gives up on trying to goad you into doing something stupid and leaves you alone. Terrorism in this case is the schoolyard bully. The original sentiment behind my post was absolutely no more complex than that and you could argue how wrong it is all day long, but anyone who’s tangled with a schoolyard bully knows that my methodology works. It’s not pretty, it’s not elegant, but it solves the problem.

Not necessarily. It is certainly possible for both sides to lose. For example, we could probably end the problem of Muslim extremism through a genocidal campaign to destroy all Muslims. It would view that outcome as a major loss for our society, but it certainly wouldn’t be a ‘win’ for the terrorists.

The point is that they are ‘winning’ by changing our lives and society, by costing us resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

That isn’t any definition of winning that I am familiar with. Even if I concede (as I have already said I am willing to do) that resources could be better spent elsewhere, failure to spend resources optimilally isn’t ‘losing.’ I don’t know of any historical conflict in which any side spent their resources perfectly. The ‘changing lives and society’ is especially weird as a criteria for ‘losing.’ After Pearl Harbor, Americans lives and society changed vastly as the entire economy went into war production mode and thousands of men joined the military. Was this ‘changing of lives and society’ some indication that the Japanese had won?

Schneir’s comments that you highlight are even more perplexing. Certainly it is true that enemies in a conflict will adapt to counter the moves that the other side makes. Both sides get to act and to react. However, I have never heard anyone argue that because the enemy can create some other plan if we prevent one tactic that therefore we shouldn’t prevent any tactics.

What does let’s stop playing mean? Should we allow people to bring guns, dynamite, C4 or whatever they want on a plane?

As far as ‘losing this game of reactive restrictions’ I haven’t seen the hordes of planes being blown up that would be a consequence of losing such a game. Certainly they are trying to beat our ‘reactive restrictions’ and perhaps they have come close on occassion.

We of course cannot be ‘truly safe’ no matter what. Perfect safety doesn’t exist in the universe. That doesn’t mean we can’t be safer.

Some measures seem perfectly resonable to me. Metal detectors and bomb sniffing devices, even if they are not perfect can increase security, and as I have indicated above make defeating that security a more complex task that uses more resources from our enemies. Treating a bomb threat as serious makes sense to me, even if most bomb threats are certainly going to prove to be false.

Of course their will be over-reactions and mistakes made. Of course we should try and learn from those mistakes and improve. Certainly bureaucracies
will do stupid things from time to time and we can work to mitigate the negative effects that they cause.

However, simply calling everything we don’t like ‘a victory terrorists’ is profoundly unserious. If we end up flying naked on planes it would be silly and somewhat embarassing. It would not be a victory for the terrorists though. It would just be stupid.