The argument that we shouldn't worry so much about terrorism because cars kill more people than terrorists is seductive to faux intellectuals like Bill Maher. The more general point is that we as a society accept all kinds of risks which are greater than the historical, statistical danger due to terrorism. I'll focus on the comparison to cars because, as far as we know today, the largest risk of violent death in the US comes from car accidents.In 2008 there were 34,017 deaths (and nearly 100,000 major injuries) related to automobile accidents in the United States. Terrorists would have to blow up 113 Boeing 777-200s each year in order to kill that many people! That is, they'd have to blow up all but six of the 777-200's (which hold 301 people in a 3-tier international setup) currently owned by American Airlines, United Airlines and Continental Airlines (together they own 119 777-200s) and would have to do so every single year, which is probably faster than they can be built. And yet there is hardly any talk of defending the American people from their Buick!
The first reason that the analogy is simplistic is that the car is a necessity in modern life. The benefit we derive from cars vastly outweighs the cost. In terms of deaths and injuries, cars almost certainly save far more lives than they end prematurely. There is no benefit to us from terrorism that I can think of, but plenty of costs in addition to the direct damage and fatalities. Second, most car-related casualties happen due to negligence or recklessness, and those casualties usually happen to the people who are directly responsible. One can reduce the risk of traveling in a car dramatically by wearing a seatbelt, driving carefully, and maintaining the car in good working order. Third, society has already come to terms with the risk. This is not something that can be easily duplicated in other areas. Traveling by plane is still far safer than driving the equivalent number of miles in a car, but far more people are afraid of dying in a plane crash than in a car crash. This may be irrational, but it is a reality. Terrorists can dramatically raise the fear associated with flying (rational or not), and if they do that they can degrade our standard of living as they already have done to a significant extent since 9/11.
Finally, it is not clear how effective terrorists can be if they become encouraged by success. The daily dish reader is correct that it is extremely unlikely terrorists could cause as many deaths per year as cars do simply by blowing up planes. But success at blowing up planes encourages more people to join the terrorist/jihadist cause and emboldens the leaders of that cause. It's possible that such success actually increases the probability of nuclear terrorism. Even Bill Maher would understand that a small nuclear explosion in a US city would dramatically change our society for the worse.
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Is the cure worse than the disease? Well, probably not, but consider how much time & money we spend on anti-terrorism stuff. Levitt pointed out in Superfreakonomics that the shoe bomber didn't directly kill anyone but indirectly wasted enough travelers' time that it adds up to a lot of lives lost.
I just can't help thinking that we've completely overestimated the skill of our enemy. Seriously, the panty-bomber was their best and brightest?
On another note, you see that graphic on your blog showing the locations of your readers? Is that real, or just an ad? If it's real, then I'm impressed by the "geographic diversity" of your readers. :)
-DWJ
DWJ,
In a world without WMD, I think the cure may very well be worse than the disease. Of course, by "cure" I mean treating the fight against terrorists as a war rather than a police action. The "cure" you're probably referring to is the security measures we implement at airports. More than five years ago I saw a quote from an Israeli security expert who said that the US does not have an air travel security system; it only has a system for annoying people.
So it's not a question of over-estimating the enemy. It's a question of being stupid ourselves. The solution of course is to use statistical analysis to determine those who are more likely to be terrorists and then scrutinize those people more closely. If those people predominately turn out to be young muslim men who have spent time in middle eastern countries, so be it. This really shouldn't be so hard. To hell with this political correctness crap.
That graphic is real, by the way, but many of those hits are not recent at all. I think it aggregates hits over the last few months at least.
ESM
Ok so given that the main problem is preventing WMD attacks (and not using every last resource to find panty bombers), what type of action should we take?
In other words, if you had just been hired by the gov't and you had no idea what kind of anti-terrorism measures we had taken so far, and given that your main concern is WMD, what would you do? Would you even worry about airline security?
-DWJ
ESM,
Glad to see you posting into the new year!
I'd like to add one very big (and obvious) thing to your list of analogy-breakers: there's a qualitative difference between an inanimate object malfunctioning and causing death or injury (autos), and a conscious entity actively plotting death and destruction. For better or worse, we've seen what humans who burn with passion to achieve their ends can achieve. I for one am not comfortable treating their attempts in the same way we treat automobile safety (this also gets at DWJ's comment).
If government has any legitimate purpose, it is to protect us against force initiated by evildoers. This task is qualitatively different than protecting us against faulty products. It may involve going to war against the evildoers. I, for one, support waging such a war against the specific set of evildoers under consideration here, whether or not it fits into a narrow cost-benefit calculation such as would be applied to seat belt laws and the like.
In a state of nature, if I find out there's someone who means to destroy me and my family, impelled by twisted religious or ideological beliefs, I'm going to take active steps to destroy the threat - not just minimize the damage from it. This has as much to do with being a man as it does with narrowly rational cost-benefit calculations.
-- DAB
DAB, nice to see you sniping back at me in the new year! :)
I, for one, support waging such a war against the specific set of evildoers under consideration here, whether or not it fits into a narrow cost-benefit calculation such as would be applied to seat belt laws and the like.
I'm not sure if you act that way in your real life. Would you rather live in a dangerous part of town and hire a CTU agent who tracks down criminals for you, or instead pay a little extra to live in a safe area, not display expensive easily-stealable items on your property, and buy good locks?
I sympathize with the idea that we should do what it takes to "get" the bad guys, but our revealed preference in other areas of our lives is not in accordance with that attitude.
-DWJ
Hey there DWJ!
I'm saying there's a difference between random crime and random mechanical failures (in which standard economic thinking is "good enough"), and the notion that there is a "domain of Islam" and a "domain of War", and that members of the "domain of Islam" should unceasingly enslave, kill or convert inhabitants of the other domain. I would expect Jews to feel the same way about a resurgent Nazism, to take another example.
There's a difference between being a victim of theft because you left something nice in your car in a public lot, and being targeted by a crazed sect of true believers because of your religious beliefs (or lack thereof). The law recognizes making "terroristic threats" a crime, showing that people have recognized this distinction.
I'm advocating acting differently in the two cases. Obviously, the Mahers of the world aren't ready to go there. They want to keep their heads down and go about their business, and hope the crazies go away.
DWJ,
Well, I think there are many components to the fight, most of which are non-controversial and which I assume/hope we're doing already. The no-brainer ones include 1) sending out undercover teams to try to acquire WMD materials, thereby bidding up the price for such items and also raising the risk to the sellers; 2) monitoring terror networks and occasionally busting them up, either with police work or with military action; 3) improving port security, so that all containers are scanned in some way before they arrive in the US; 4) improving border security so that radioactive materials are not easily smuggled in.
More controversial measures involve making terrorism less popular, but not in the way the conventional wisdom has it. I think most people (liberals especially) are 180 degrees turned around on this subject. I am always surprised that such people view terrorism as a form of revenge, where violence begets more violence.
Terrorism is not about revenge. It's about power. It's about a weak party trying to gain some measure of leverage over a more strong party through an immoral application of violence. You cannot appease terrorism because appeasement only succeeds in demonstrating to the terrorists that their strategy works. They and other potential terrorists will be encouraged to reach for more leverage and power.
When you have an asymmetric power situation, disproportionate violence by the stronger side begets a lot less violence by the weaker. I arrived at this conclusion a long time ago just by sitting around contemplating human nature and the history of the world, but if you need empirical evidence, there is no closer analog than the Israeli experience. Every time the Israelis act with crushing military force, the military threat from their Arab neighbors and the terror threat from Hamas et al subsides dramatically. I remember very clearly when Israel turned Sheikh Yassin (the geriatric, blind and quadriplegic founder of Hamas) into a bloody puddle back in 2004. His successor bought the farm three weeks later. At the time, every talking head on TV in the US was predicting an unprecedented wave of terrorist attacks. Exactly the opposite happened as the successor to the successor decided that discretion was the better part of valor.
I basically agree with DAB's points. There is a big difference between accidents and terrorism because terrorism is driven by rational human actors with rational goals. You put your head in the sand, and the problem will grow rather than stay the same or decrease on its own. There is a big difference between common crime and terrorism, as well, because the goals are different. The vast majority of criminals are just trying to make money, and that's it. They don't see it as a success if they cause society to restrict the freedom of its citizens or spend a lot of money defending against crime. As for non-economic crime (e.g. serial killers and rapists), I view that as similar to what DAB called "random mechanical failures." Those crimes happen because some tiny fraction of the human population is simply wired incorrectly (psychopathic AND irrational) and manages to escape society's filters long enough to do damage. (cont)
(cont)
So what are the controversial measures you take to make terrorism less popular? First, as I've made abundantly clear, is a ruthless, disproportionate application of violence in pursuit of the terrorists themselves. Predator drone strikes are perfect examples of this. They are extrajudicial, ruthless, and quite effective. The fact that Obama has embraced them shows that, although he's a hypocrite, he has been persuaded that these strikes reduce the number of terrorists, directly and indirectly.
Second is a focus on not allowing terrorists even a hint of progress towards their goals, whatever they may be. In response to a terror attack, whatever Al Qaeda wants you not to do, you keep doing. Whatever they want you to do, you do the opposite (within reason of course).
And third is collective punishment against the societies that harbor, supply and encourage terrorists. This sounds immoral, but as with the second measure it actually can be achieved as a logical consequence of pursuing terrorists and defending against terrorist attacks. The administration just implemented strict security measures for air travelers coming into the US from "watch list" countries. This is perfect. Non-terrorists from those countries will suffer, and they will blame the terrorists for their suffering.
There are those that claim that Bush's response to Al Qaeda increased their ability to recruit and exacerbated the terrorist threat against the US. I have followed this pretty closely, and the only evidence I've seen in support of that theory are conclusory statements from a handful of random intelligence people and many, many Democratic politicians and left-wing opinion writers. Against that evidence, there are credible reports of a scattered, weakened and demoralized Al Qaeda and the fact that there were no attacks against the US homeland from the end of 2001 through much of 2009 (although attempted attacks were very much on the rise in 2009). Also there is just plain common sense.
Yes, there were many times the strategy was executed poorly. And, yes, airport security is completely counterproductive. But the basic ideas of treating terrorists as enemy combatants, acting preemptively in terms of long-term threats, and trying to shake up the existing dysfunctional order in the Arab and Muslim world through military action were good ones.
ESM,
Your latest response to myself and DWJ is a tour-de-force. I've never seen so much good sense and correct strategy in this matter expressed so succinctly, and I do get around a bit.
Bravo. You rock.
I would love to see a serious contender for PotUS in 2012 embrace exactly the strategy you put forth here. Maybe you should write speeches for Romney?
-- DAB
There's a difference between being a victim of theft because you left something nice in your car in a public lot, and being targeted by a crazed sect of true believers because of your religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
DAB, I bet there are people in the city that you live near that would target you for your national origin or religion, and I bet you would still just move to a safer neighborhood and lock your doors. I certainly don't think you'd allocate 4-5% of your income hunting down those lunatics (the way that we spend that much on national defense). Yeah, I know it's an imperfect analogy, but I can't help thinking that the panty bomber is a distraction, and WMDs are the only thing worth thinking about.
I am sympathetic though to the idea of deterring terrorism through various cost-effective means. I think both of you are right that if you ignore this problem, it can grow enormously. ESM has a good point about retaliation being one such example. But I can't imagine that we're spending our resources in a very smart way. When I think of the war on terror, I think of the war in Iraq and TSA harassing my wife about her water bottle.
Why is nobody saying "We have $x to spend to deter terrorism. What's the best approach?" Istead politicians are saying, "We need to look like we're doing something, and if we can spend lots of money in my district, even better!"
Ok, enough ranting. ESM, tell us more about fiat currency! :)
-DWJ
DWJ,
Oh, I completely agree with you as to the absurdity, waste, and ineffectiveness of many if not all of the WoT measures. If I were president, you'd see measures more in line with what ESM suggested.
-- DAB
Your article ignores a critical piece of information: the "war on terrorism" is total crap, made up to justify war profiteering and stealing civil liberties. Have you not investigated WTC 7? Do you not remember the WMD lies? How about the fact that supposedly SAUDIS carried out the attacks? Have you done any research into this topic or had a single critical thought???
Anon,
Benjamin Franklin supposedly said that "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead."
My experience is that the sentiment expressed in that quote is true. Therefore, I am generally skeptical of conspiracy theories, especially those concerning events which happened during my adult lifetime and which held my intense interest and scrutiny as they unfolded.
You might have more success preaching your conspiracy theories concerning 10 year old events to people who are under 25 years of age, or perhaps people who are mentally impaired.
Good luck!
ESM
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