Justus For All

Their goals are more lofty, however it’s not winning the war - it’s winning a battle. This is not a war with ‘one decisive battle’ - rather it’s a slow slog up a hill, fighting for each and every blade of grass.

I don’t think that Bruce and Random are meaning that they won the war - rather that we lost a battle.

I don’t see it as losing a battle.

To me, we lose a battle if someone blows up a plane.

There are other things that are ‘wrong,’ demonizing all Muslims for example, but I don’t think that is happening much and I think we are ‘winning’ that battle as much as we are losing it.

Us being afraid, which I am not sure we particularly are, is not losing a battle. Us being too afraid to resist would be, but I don’t see that happening yet.

The logic that being too vigilant proves we are afraid and therefore have lost doesn’t make any sense to me. Does the same rule apply for a military camp where if sentries are posted but no one attacks it proves that they were over-vigilant?

Sure we can and should talk about what is effective and what is not in being vigilant. Sure we shouldn’t beat up innocent Muslims out of fear of terror. Employing rhetoric like ‘if we do this the terrorists win’ though is not only inaccurate, but it isn’t useful. We should do what is right both to promote our own values and defend ourselves against aggression (and the two will have to balance) for our own reasons, not based on some nebulous fear of somehow it will let the terrorists win.

“Us being afraid, which I am not sure we particularly are, is not losing a battle. Us being too afraid to resist would be, but I don’t see that happening yet.”

You may not be afraid, but it is readily apparent to anyone who’s read the news in the last two weeks, that lots of other people are.

tsykoduk is right, I was referring to a lost battle, rather than a lost war in my post. I think that we had a firm resolve to not be afraid of what was to come in the months that followed 9/11. That resolve is fading and now people are getting scared. They need to be inspired, supported and assured that no matter what the terrorists do, we will not let them win. They also need to understand that freaking out and not boarding a plane with a passenger that has already gone through three security checks is an act that has a word that goes along with it: paranoia.

There’s a difference between vigilance and paranoia, and the groundings of these flights and the oddly large number of them smacks of paranoia, rather than vigilance.

Lets take a look at the exact opposite approach. We could of course be terribly brave and say we won’t have any airline security at all, even as increasing numbers of airplanes were blown up.

Would that represent victory?

That seems sort of like a ‘charge of the light brigade’ mentality to me.

Certainly a large number of planes (both before and since 9/11) have taken action due to a percieved security threat that later proved to be unneeded. Equally true is that many buildings have been evacuated because of bomb threats when later it was found that their was no bomb.

Characterizing this as automatically paranoia makes little sense to me.

I don’t necesarily disagree that you can find specific examples that show people being paranoid rather than reasonable. I don’t think though that all of the examples you and Bruce cite are of that nature.

For example, one of the episodes you link to in your post is about a finding a bomb threat on a plane. I agree that we certainly are aware that almost all bomb threats prove to be false. Nonetheless, we always act on bomb threats, not because we are paranoid, but we know that the cost of acting and being wrong is so much less than the cost of not acting and being wrong.

Regardless, I would happily accept that not acting when their was a bomb would give the terrorists a win (in the form of an exploded plane) but I don’t accept that acting when their isn’t a bomb gives terrorists a win.

Unless you can show me that the general terror people are feeling is translating into effects that the terrorists want I don’t see how you can say it helping them ‘win.’

Here is another example. In the rather famous Richard Reid case, his fellow passangers upon seeing him try to light his shoes on fire jumped up and beat him.

In that case he was in fact a terrorist, but certainly it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume he was just a somewhat crazy person (he was that as well). Was the passengers jumping up and dealing with Reid a ‘win’ for the terrorists? They were after all reacting out of fear that they would get blown up. It seems you would be happier with them blown up, but not afraid.

To quote a luminary

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

How many millions or billions of dollars were lost by the virtual shutting down of the air transport system after the hair-gel bombers were found?

Don’t just count the late shipments, count the lost hours of productivity. Count the hours spent by people being poked, prodded and asked to take their shoes off.

If we could prove that reactive acts such as we have see actually do anything, I would be all for them.

However, it was not security screeners that foiled the hair-gel plot. It was investigators. Good old shoe leather struck again.

What we need to do is simple - fund investigations and humint. Stop with all of the high profile last ditch protecting vs what the bad guys did last time - start to be more proactive. Stop with the security theater, which is designed to foster more fear and secure funding for an agency, but rather use that money to actually proactively take care of the problem children.

Another quote:

People Should Not Be Afraid of Their Governments. Governments Should Be Afraid of Their People

Paranoia at work: Ipod dropped in can, causes three hour flight delay.

Other than that, well said tsykoduk. I agree.

Once again, you can make plenty of valid arguments for having different security plans, changing focus on where to spend resources and what not.

You can make planty of valid arguements that certain tactics cost more, either in money or freedoms, than they save in protecting us.

However, the ‘if we do X the terrorists will win’ when X is nothing at all that the terrorists want is not a valid arguement.

As to your quotes, here is another:

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Unlike your examples, this author actually had a bit of practicle expirience in the field.

I also think that the idea that it is ’simple’ and all we need is to fund investigations and provide humint is over simplified. Firstly, having greater security measures means terror plots have to be more complex and elaborate, which makes them easier to detect. The terror captures in Britain, involving the liquid explosives plot, might not have been found if it was easy to bring a fertilizer bomb on a plane. If the plot is less complex and involves less resources our chances of detecting it are smaller. From that perspective, effective security works directly with investigations and humint.

It is of course easy to call things paranoia in hindsight when things turn out not to be threats after all. It is also easy to use hindsight to see the obvious clues and dropped balls when things go badly. It is much more difficult to deal with this things without the wisdom of hindsight though.

tsykoduk: I agree with Dave. Though terrorists may have carried out a certain portion of their agenda, they’ve in no way succeeded in winning any wars or, for that matter, battles. When people in Europe and the U.S. are afraid to ride buses, go outside, or visit malls, restaurants and theaters, like they were in the last intifada in Jerusalem, for example, they’ll have won a major war. For now, the West still holds the upper hand. For how long is a question we should all be asking ourselves.

The point is that they are ‘winning’ by changing our lives and society, by costing us resources that could be better spent elsewhere. They are in this for the long haul, I am sure. This is not a ’storm the beach’ type of war - this is truly a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign.

Schneier said:

“We ban guns and knives, and the terrorists use box cutters. We ban box cutters and corkscrews, and they hide explosives in their shoes. We screen shoes, and the terrorists use liquids. We ban liquids, and the terrorist will use something else. It’s not a fair game, because the terrorists get to see our security measures before they plan their attack.” And it’s not a game we can win. So let’s stop playing…

We are loosing this game of reactive restrictions. Every time we ‘tighten security measures’ at an airport, we hear about another plot using some other method. I’ve said it before - the only way that we will be truly safe when we fly is if we are naked, and strapped to the seats. And it’s getting bloody close to that right now.

If we are loosing, then some one must be winning, right?

“f we are loosing, then some one must be winning, right?”

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.

I’m beginning to think that this discussion is pointless, as I am already aware that you are willing to sacrifice freedom for security, something that I disagree with very strongly and one of the major reasons that I may not vote republican in the next election, especially if Evan Bayh is the democratic nominee. In spite of that, I am going to try to get you to understand another perspective here.

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.

I have never said I would sacrifice freedom for security. I do think that a minimum level of security is a necessary prerequisite for freedom though. I am also not sure what this has to do with voting Republican or not. One of the major themes John Kerry tried to capatize on in 2004 was the Bush administration not doing enough on the security front, in particular port security. Clearly, this isn’t a simple partisan exercise.

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.’

You were on a weird schoolyard. On my schoolyard, the bully came back with friends if you tried to kick his butt in a fight. Sometimes, the friends had knives. Though there was this one time that I made the bully run home crying because I’d had enough of him ragging on me. He’d made rude comments to me every single day all summer and on the first day of fourth grade I just lost it and called him a name which I will not repeat on your blog, then smacked him and smacked him and smacked him. I found out the next day that I’d scratched him with my fingernails pretty badly on his arm, and he’d run home to his mother. What’s funny about this, is that his mom cleaned him up and told him he deserved it and that he should leave me alone.

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.

I said fighting sometimes stops it. Some bullys are tougher than others, and sometimes you have to fight harder than other times.

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.

I didn’t say I ignored them. I said I stopped talking to them. There’s a difference. If you don’t listen to what they have to say, and it’s readily apparent that you don’t care what they have to say they will stop talking to you. Don’t think for a second that I didn’t take other measures to avoid being bullied, because I did. I talked with my teachers and my counsellors at school about it, and made my parents aware of the bullying so that things could be done to put it to an end to it. I took pro-active steps that were more likely to gain me the end result that I wanted, rather than having a panic attack over it. It took me a long time to figure out how to manage it because I tend to be a reactive person, but once I stopped reacting and started solving there wasn’t a problem anymore.

Vigilance, not paranoia.

“don’t listen to what they have to say, and it’s readily apparent that you don’t care what they have to say” This is the sort of behavior that I would call ignoring.

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.

“They were more into the hitting thing. It is difficult to not care about being kneed in the nuts.”

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

Yeah, and appropriate too!

Funny, Dave, I always thought the way to deal with a bully is to report him to the teacher or principal.

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.

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