Is terrorism really a threat?

Great Debates
1

Er, firstly let me say by “is terrorism really a threat,” I mean “is terrorism a threat in nearly the magnitude we believe”. Of course, terrorism is a threat (threat being commonly defined as a range spanning nuclear war and bacon).

The fact that terrorism is a very serious concern seems to be a tautology in the Media and the rest of our society. We may have debates on how far the Patriot Act goes, but no one seems to question whether there is actually any reason to upturn our law and, especially, our government (with the Department of Homeland Security).

However, in the past thirty years, the number of Americans to die from terrorism, although I have no hard numbers, must have been on the order of 5,000. This is a large number. And if were a careful orator, I would have presented this statistic second to the fact that over that same timeperiod, the number of murders, although also a rough estimate, exceeded 300,000.

Even in the year 2001, when the majority of American terrorist casualties occured, murder outnumbered terrorism 3 to 1 (this, incidentally, being a relatively safe year from murder). IF EVERY YEAR HAD A SEPTEMBER 11th, murder would still be our bigger concern by far.

And I’m not even talking about accidents, health risks, or all the other stuff that makes us die and which we should factor into the picture when assessing the priority of one causative agent.

So why the fuck are we running around like headless chickens, restructuring our entire way of life while we sanely cope with murder and numerous other of life’s risks?

It’s not that we shouldn’t be concerned about terrorism. It’s just that things aren’t rationally adding up. Especially since it would have taken only a fraction of what we have done so far to reduce the chance of another 9/11 a great deal.

The only threat which could even potentially equal or surpass 9/11 is a nuclear bomb. (Not a dirty bomb! Everyone fears dirty bombs, but experts agree that the biggest threat of dirty bombs is that people will fear them. What a train of logic!) However, it is also the threat that most people are waving off as too unlikely, and of all the things we are doing we’re still not checking our freight containers for them.

So what do you guys think? Is it about time to call bullshit on the most fundamentally accepted assessment of our era? One which, were it false, be responsible for erroneously clouding our judgement to an incalculable degree?

2

Same as always: the anomalies get the airtime. No-one was prepared for the World Trade Center attacks. It took everyone completely by surprise, there was a cry for action, action was taken, and that path has been walked since.

The media keep talking about terrorism because people are afraid of terrorism. Politicians keep talking about terrorism because people are afraid of terrorism. Why are people afraid of terrorism? Because the media and politicians won’t shut up about it.

As you correctly say, there are causes of death and distress that are orders of magnitude more common than terrorism, but they’re not sensational, so they don’t stick in people’s heads. Remember Mad Cow Disease? How many people died? Zero. Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which does kill people, has not been shown to have any connection to Mad Cow Disease.

I think that’s it. Self-perpetuating hype.

3

I live in the UK, we have quite a lot of experience of terrorism.

Let’s try things the other way, down play every incident

  • yawn, WTC destroyed by aircraft, only 3,000 dead, yawn

London tubes bombed, under 100 dead, buses running as normal.

NatWest Tower withstands bomb blasts - yawn

Somehow that does not feel as if it would work to me.

I’m not that sure about ‘civil liberties’, they sound grand, but if you have ever been threatened with a cavity search by a Customs jerk at an airport (whose mates are doing Sesame Street imitations behind his back - to mock him) you start wondering,

  • especially if a friend of yours got exactly that (cavity searched) some years before - and she turned out to be a rather influential lawyer.

I don’t think we in the UK are losing much, apart from an illusion, and the majority of people quite like the idea of going for the swine who are trying to kill them.

The press waxes hysterical about everything, but so does the medical profession.
One gets used to it - and filters out the manufactured stuff.

We don’t exactly expect our government to be competent, but would be well hacked off if it did nothing.

4

Dramatic fatalities are more alarming than ones which accumulate statistically. A lot of people died on 9/11, obviously: the population of a small town, killed in a matter of hours. The numbers only fade into statistical insignificance over the course of years, but at the same time the emotional significance doesn’t fade at all. So, 3000 dead on 9/11 eclipses the number of people who die in auto accidents every year through sheer emotional impact, even though auto accidents are statistically the far greater killer.

That’s something I find very frustrating about the war on terror, moreso given this whole “liquid explosives” scare. Implementing good airport security should not have been this big of a hassle. El Al hasn’t had a hijacking since 1968. They have access to intelligence information and skilled psychological profilers, so that they can identify potential threats and subject them to heightened scrutiny. In the U.S. you get TSA employees who know how to search your shoes and a “no-fly list” that apparently isn’t even checked before you take off (they’re working on that).

In the face of that, raw numbers are probably not very reassuring to the public in general.

I’m all in favour of calling bullshit where it’s warranted; the question may how to call bullshit. Just spouting the raw numbers, however correct they may be, isn’t reassuring and may not accomplish anything in the face of charges of being “soft of terra”.

Not saying anything, however, is undoubtedly worse. There are voices out there calling terrorism an “existential threat to civilization”, and unless those voices are rebutted we’re going to have more sad cases like Jean Charles de Menenez. So yes, call bullshit, and if you find a convincing way to do it please let me know.

5

I don’t understand this part. It sounds like being threatened with a cavity search made you less inclined to support the upholding of civil liberties.

6

It and several other events, made me wonder whether civil liberties actually exist.

7

Lots of people are answering why terrorism is getting attention. This is a good discussion, but now quite the one I was aiming for.

I’m rather looking to see whether or not we can agree to conclude that terrorism is not the risk (by orders of magnitude) that people perceive it to be. The people putting forth the explanations seem to be agreeing. I’m actually a bit suprised by the lack of disagreement so far.

Well, this being a case of mass behavior, the way to combat it is to first get at least a small group of people to agree. Maybe soon enough everyone else will have a revelation.

It just seems to me that people have never had enter their mind the thought that terrorism isn’t really a big threat, even with the bombings and supposed averted incidents which have happened. It is just such an axiom that it is. I have NEVER heard it challenged.

Even if they don’t exist now, there’s plenty of room for them to not exist more.

8

One difficulty now with being reasonable about terrorism is that a rather large economicconstituency has developed around the sale of high tech gadgetry, a politcal constituency about showing the voters that you are doing something, and a media constituency around having something exciting to report every day.

The only ones who can break this self-perpetuating cycle are we the people, but we are unorganized and too many have been truly scared out of their wits by all the hoopla.

[Rumsfeldatron on]Are terrorists dangerous? You bet they are. Are they a serious threat to national security? I don’t think so.[Rumsfeldatron off]

9

Terrorism isn’t about threat, it’s about terror - the injury and loss of life are, in the majority of cases, statistically small in comparison to the injury and loss of life that are just happening all over the place at ‘normal’ levels due to accident, natural disaster, disease, etc.

The trouble is that terrorised (or terrified) people instinctively modify their behaviour to try to avoid the source of trouble, and this has a big impact on a lot of human concerns, and is very hard to attenuate or control.

10

It’s curious, and sort of scary, that people will spend billions to try to guard against a terrorist attack which is unlikely and yet skimp on protections agains highway accidents, hurricanes and earthquakes which aren’t.

Children will believe in Santa Claus, who isn’t real, and ignore the wolf at the door, who is [or something along those lines]. James Thurber

11

Look, all we have to do is that each poster who agrees writes very clearly: I agree that terrorism is overblown and not the threat, by far, that people believe it is.

If everyone starts writing the above, many heads may be turned on this forum alone.

That is the solution, not a treatise about how the common mentality is inescapable. I get the feel that all of your posts are implicitly agreeing, but you have to say it out-loud!

I agree, terrorism, like dirty bombs, are about terror. But we have to break the pointless fear cycle by repeating the facts to each other.

12

I repeat, if you agree, please say: the threat of terrorism is a tiny fraction of what we make it out to be.

It is scary how many people have never given that thought the slightest consideration. Please make very clear your opinion on this matter.

13

9/11 may have been avoided had there been better communication and coordination between our various government agencies. I’m not saying the Dept. of Homeland Security is doing such a great job but after a huge intelligence disaster it makes sense to take stock and figure out how to make improvments.

Are you asking a serious question or is this hyperbole to make a point? I only ask because my entire life hasn’t been restructured.

Economically speaking, how much did 9/11 cost the United States? There are other factors involved beyond the number of deaths.

Marc

14

Oh, well, if that’s what you’re asking, yes, I believe the threat of terrorism is wildly overblown and not the threat, by far, that people think it is.

A lot of folks get real emotional when one asserts this sort of thing, however.

I’m guessing that some folks think that saying “terrorism is not all that much of a threat” is tantamount to saying that I don’t care who amongst my neighbors lives or dies. I certainly do care, but think I can also can recognize that a change in a threat level from the high to the low millions/one is probably not all that significant.

15

The threat of terrorism is a tiny fraction of what we make it out to be.

16

But if this is just a poll, then you picked the wrong forum. Listen, what people intellectually acknowledge as true, and how they act, are two different things, because we’re complex creatures.
Most people would probably agree that no tangible harm would arise from dipping your hand into a box of maggots, but many of the same people would not be able to bring themselves to actually do it. There is a limit to the extent that our cool intellectual analysis can override our visceral animal behaviour.

17

I’ll take a different tactic in this debate. I agree that the threat of terrorism is small…the number of people who die from large-scale terror attacks pales next to the threat of deaths from other causes.

However, I do not think that the measures being taken are disproportionate to the threat. The other large-number causes of death, such as murder or accident, are accumulations of small incidents, impossible to stop every single one, impossible to identify any single cause, impossible to use an organized government effort to save large numbers of lives. A terrorist act, on the other hand, is capable (as we found out) of killing thousands at a time (and just imagine if the 9/11 plot was planned for two hours later! The WTC would have been much more full of people!) and doing billions of dollars in damage. If even one of those acts can be stopped with diligent effort, the payoff is tremendous.

18

I was going to answer the OP more fully, but appearently thats not what he’s looking for. Appearently he just wants a poll:

Leaving aside all that worthless psychological stuff, leaving aside the economic impact a 9/11 every year would actually have, and just taking your poll, I have to say:

No, I don’t agree that terrorism is really not a threat to society. I don’t believe that you can judge its impact simply by body count. So, chalk me up on that side and have a mod move this to the proper polling forum.

-XT

19

No, I don’t want this to just be a poll! If you disagree with me, I’d like a debate on that. It’s just if you do agree, please make that very clear (because I think there is too much silence on the issue).

People have brought up economic consequences of 9/11. That is an important point. Firstly I’ll address it by saying that the WTC is an especially important building for finance (and also a very valuable building in terms of real estate) and you can’t generalize it to terrorism as a whole. Second, the economic fallout was actually not that great. Third, much of the economic reaction was because of psychology and perception, which can’t exactly be included since it comes from misunderstandings which should be our objective to dispel.

Lastly, however, I don’t think people would be as concerned about terrorism if the major factor was losing some money (and it’s definately not a great deal of money… a tiny fraction of GDP or total worth of real estate, depending on what economic damage you’re counting. it is an even smaller concern in relative terms than is the death count, imo).

More convincingly, someone said that terrorism is something which we can more concretely prevent than other dangers. Whether or not it is a single event doesn’t matter (contrary to the poster’s argument), but the point is interesting. This does mean that it deserves more of our money and attention, in proportion to its consequence. However, since its consequence is small (say, a few hundred deaths on average a year or millions of dollars if we somehow defeat the psychological fallout), devoting much more resources proportionally still ends up with us devoting only a reasonable amount of resources overall.
I should have mentioned this before, BUT THE BIGGEST REASON TO NOT CARE ABOUT TERRORISM is that its threat does come from psychology! If we remove this component, we disarm the terrorists. It is just like the dirty bombs, we fear them because the experts tell us they are to be feared, but the experts asses that because we fear them. It’s is pointless and stupid, and John F. Kennedy’s words ring in my head. Terrorists can’t inflict that many casualties or that much economic loss, so if we stop caring they’ll have infinitely less reason to go on. And then the problem of terrorism will truly come much closer to being solved.

We should stop caring for this reason even if we do have reason to care, but I am arguing that we do not have even that.*

I don’t understand. You say to leave out psychology and economics, but you still say that terrorism is a threat beyond deaths. In what way?

*I am taking poetic license, but I mean “care this much.”

20

Suppose al-Queda realizes its dreams and is able to infiltrate hundreds of suicide bombers into the USA. all of a sudden, trans, busses, and public buildings are being bombed, coast to coast. Would this change the equation? The 9/11 attack was limited to one small area-what happens when cities from Atlanta to Seattle are attacked?