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Causing Terror On the Cheap
jhigh writes "Bruce Schneier posts on his blog today about the value of terror with respect to cost-benefit for the terrorists. If you look at terror attacks in terms of what they cost the terrorists to implement, compared with what they cost the economy of the nation that was hit, the reward for terrorists is astronomical. Add in the insane costs of the security measures implemented afterward, particularly in America, and it's easy to see why the terrorists do what they do. Even when they're unsuccessful, they cost us billions in security countermeasures."
Let's face it, I don't know if the Terrorists have "won", but we have surely lost. Terrorists have changed our lives, robbed us of many of our guaranteed rights and freedoms (in the US this has occurred with the aid of our government), and we are paying for it every day (and not just with dollars).
So who benefits financially?
These ideas have been floated around for quite awhile. Many folks here in these forums have said as much. Mr Schneier himself has addressed the same issue before. At what point does this move out of the "relevation" category?
It's not a waste of money if you're in the business of government. For you and me, of course, we lose big time. But for those who make their fortunes in the business of government, terrorism is a jackpot of infinite justification for more power and revenue. When your revenue is taken by force, not persuasion, it hardly matters where the money ends up or whether you "succeed" or "fail". What matters is that the money passes through your hands, giving you a chance to exploit that cash flow for personal gain.
Certainly, I think the premise is true. It's why terrorism continues to be a tool, and why it's so hard to get rid of.
What's never been clear to me is how the economic impact to the target country helps towards the stated goals of the terrorists. Does Al Queda believe that if they depress our economy consistently enough, we will no longer be able to financially support Israel? History proves that not to be true.
--
$tar -xvf
I seem to recall a number of economists and poli sci students in the early 90s smugly telling me all about a component of the Soviet Union's cold war "loss" and economic collapse: the US making them think they had to spend more and more in the arms race with us (zomg, USA can destroy the world 10 times over, we can only do it 5 times, build more nukes comrade!). A pretty shaky social contract, to begin with, finally got kicked in the nuts one too many times. C/D?
That which does not kill us makes us... st
1. Get hired as a sales rep at a major security systems vendor
2. Find a flimsy but potential hole in the current security process of a given country (hopefully a reactive country that only fights fires when they're on their doorstep)
3. Start developing a solution for said problem
4. Hire a shady business person loosely associated with a criminal or terrorist group to orchestrate an 'act of terror' using said exploit and offer $10mil for 'security consulting' or the like
5. Start knocking on doors about selling your newly developed product
6. Wait
7. Reap the billions the gov will throw at you to make their latest problem go away
Bye!
And as almost any of us could have told you, a hammer is a lot cheaper than replacing all the windows of your car.
A handful of terrorist with box cutters have cost us over a trillion dollars and over 5,000 lives of soldier with no end in sight and that wasn't even counting the attack itself. Terrorism is about disrupting lives so they are wildly successful.
I applaud Bruce for railing against it, and Marcus Ranum too in his even more pointed criticism in his books. But what they are railing against is the military industrial complex, and their complaints have as much power as Eisenhower's at the end of his term, when he cautioned the American people not to let it take over.
Too. Late.
Guys like Richard Clarke write books about the upcoming CyberWar, they are abetted by Chinese BGP attacks that they couldn't be more thrilled about, because they have founded security firms that are already lobbying on K Street. Wake up. This is big business and the Blackwaterization of airports, the internet, the highways, it's begun and it won't stop. Not when the MSNBC poll is running 75-25 in favor of classifying Julian Assante a terrorist.
Poor Daniel Ellsberg, living long enough to see all his pentagon paper work undone in broad brushstrokes. Nixon didn't live to see the American security state flourish, he'd have been flush with joy had he lived. He and Charles Colson would have danced a little jig with Henry Kissinger, the merry assassins of democracy were simply ahead of their time.
America is happy to spend billions allegedly securing against terror attacks, but won't do the obvious things for fear of corporate lobbyists.
Namely, anyone with a fake ID and cash can buy all the handguns, high power rifles, extended magazines and armor piercing ammunition he could want. It's a terrorist's best possible outcome. Mexican drug cartels take road trips to the US to buy weapons and ammo. It's crazy.
Citizens take the burden, corporations are untroubled.
The simple answer is to stop wasting money on shit like this. Something that kills less people per year than farm animals is not something to be wasting money on. When the towers fell we should have rebuilt them 10 stories taller, and locked the cockpit door. That should have been the end of that. Instead we waste money on ineffective security and act like a bunch of Nancys.
Specifically for those terrorists in the set of ( Authoritarian Politicians, Kleptocrats, Corporatists).
For these soulless creatures, they've profited and gained beyond measure.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Terrorists hurt taxpayers but all the terrorism related expenses go to some contractors. Money to rebuild, to cure disease, to scan people at the airport and so on.
So basically all 9/11 terrorism did was transfer wealth to the capitalists, create a casus belli for american involvement in the middle east. And getting a large numbers of people killed. Mostly innocent. Way to go.
Terrorism has won, just as it always did since the French revolution, not terrorists.
Terrorism will always win unless a terror act is considered just as a criminal act and the only response is punishing those involved and restoring the previous situation in all respects, political social and all. That would make a terrorist act irrelevant.
Once somebody can get political, economic, social changes from an act of terrorism, that will become attractive, either as a normal or as a false flag operation.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Daleks.
to see why the terrorists do what they do.
The billion-dollar cost of a terrorist attack is paid by the citizens and the security contractors benefit. Doing the math: who has more incentives to make a terrorist attack, the government+private military complex or a couple thousand angry, untrained and disorganized fanatics?
In both cases, you are attacked, and you have costs.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
The terrorists are in our own government(s). They have far more resources to use fear and scaremongering to trick the citizenry into willingly giving up their rights under the guise that some guys in caves on the other side of the world want to take those same rights away.
There are places on the internet where smart people think very hard about issues like this. It turns out that the most effective terrorism is inspired by Open Source Software models, where sharing and reuse of common components improves efficiency. (It's not so strange to think of the Kalashnikov or a bomb detonator design as a piece of code.) The goal of terrorists is to de-legitimize national governments by causing them to weaken or collapse. Then, non-state entities can find a niche in the vacuum left behind. They've been incredibly effective in Mexico, Nigeria and many other places. Giant powers like the USA and the USSR are much harder beast to take down, but clearly, there is precedent.
Even when they're unsuccessful, they cost us billions in security countermeasures.
That seems to be a textbook example of "successful terrorism."
The objective is only "body count" when talking to asshole politicians trying to sell their scared-shitless cluster-fuck as a Good Thing(TM).
"US military spending is greater than that spent by the rest of the world’s nations combined. As the US claims to 'defend' Democracy, it subverts it. How is the US truly concerned about terrorists acquiring WMD when it is the US that leads the world in the manufacture, sale and distribution of WMD? WMD are a big chunk of our GDP. Military spending, generally, is by far the biggest slice of the pie. The US is in the death business." - Len Hart, How the U.S. went from 'World's Number One Exporter of Terrorism' to Bankrupt
"Unbeknownst to most Americans, their government was hard at work supplying Iraq with billions of dollars in U.S. government financing and hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of advanced machinery and electronic equipment in the years leading up to the 1991 Gulf War." - William D. Hartung, And Weapons for All, 1994
"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the 'TV watcher' to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money." - Pierre-Henri Bunel, former French intelligence and military officer
I grew up in the UK. In the 70s and 80s there were bombs going off regularly in the UK because of the situation in Northern Ireland but the response seemed to be less significant than the response to the present 'terror'. People seemed to get on with life more back then and seemed to be more pragmatic in their responses.
Anybody know why it seems like we've responded with a much greater response this time round? Because these guys are suicide bombers? People worry more? Or did we respond at about the same level last time round?
I was in London when the truck bomb blew up large parts of Canary Wharf, the people I knew who worked in the area seemed to be more concerned about checking if they should go to work the next day, if the office was still there, more than anything else.
That one was for free.
I'm sure the TSA is working on it.
It cost the terrorists way more than $4200 to pull this off. Many of them died trying to pull off attacks like this. Same with the 9/11 attacks. Many of them paid for the attacks with their lives, either killed or captured.
On the other hand, at least some of the trillions we've spent are an inevitable part of defending ourselves in a world where there are always people trying to enslave you.
Has there actually been any major war or conflict in which terrorism hasn't been used in place of costly head-on campaigns? Demoralization of the opposite side's citizenry and the invoking of fear in one's opponent's lower ranks is a standard tactic in every battle and war... especially if at least one side is low on bodies/resources.
We could do the same in the "War on Terror" if we wished. Hell, we just may be, but the public may not know about it.
However, I don't necessarily agree with the quote "They cost us billions in countermeasures." That shifts the purchasing responsibility onto a /tactic/ instead of a person who signs the supply and service requisitions. It is an active choice to spend any dollar as a response to terrorism. If those "countermeasures" are actually kick-backs or unethical methods of funding a friend's business, did terrorism cause that fraud? No. It's an action of man.
"So random poster, you seem to be suggesting that we're spending too much on fighting terrorism... is that what you're saying?"
No, not really. I think we're spending too much money NOT fighting terrorism. Or, to say it another way, I think we're spending too much money on things that will not rationally reduce the chance of anti-US terrorism.
"WTF?"
STFU and let me explain. We spend billions on creating pain and suffering. Terrorists recruit those who have been affected by (directly or indirectly) that pain and suffering. Suddenly there's more money and bodies for terrorism. So the US spends more money on creating pain and suffering... etc. You see the problem. Hearts and minds have not been won. Only hate and derision.
Direct investment in schools (secular AND religious), infrastructure, non-narcotic agricultural income sources, cultural heritage centers (years before Chase Credit and McDonalds, please) -- these are all ways to spend the money that will not increase the terrorist recruitment causes. Oh, and don't charge a dime for it. Make sure it's a gift. There's no use in doing good with the intent of reducing terrorism if the people are on the tab for all the "good" you're doing.
With stronger education, reinforced cultural roots, non-controversial sources of income, the people themselves will begin to take politics into their own hands. It's a ~40 year process, but that's how people change... one generation at a time.
But these aren't profitable ventures. War is much more profitable. Responding to terrorism, as the article shows, is much more profitable. And we value the economy over all other things in America, today.
"Terrorist attacks are often designed to provoke an overreaction from the opponent"
Based on the new US security measures involving molestation, radiation etc I will avoid flying whenever possible. I'm sure there are a lot of Americans that feel this way. The government has fallen for this tactic hook, line and sinker costing America billions.
Something that kills less people per year than farm animals is not something to be wasting money on.
That's right. What we really need to do is divert those resources to where they're most desperately needed, in the global struggle against violent farm animals. The U.S. has very few strategic resources devoted to the real threats; we waste money on TSA body searches while our strategic cow-tipping arsenals decay. If we're not careful we will soon be living George Orwell's nightmare.
It is the perception that the money terrorists have spent getting a super power riled up is hugely disproportionate to the after effects. Ignore direct costs of the 9/11 attacks and we ARE talking about astronomical amounts of money fighting phantoms.
Going to war against two different countries as a "security measure" is the real costs come from. There were many pro-war Americans at that time, but according to this article nations like the U.S. would need to fight the "War on Terror" completely covertly to keep the cost benefit motive away from future terrorists.
Conversely, the worst thing to do would be to ride around on the deck of an aircraft carrier (possibly the ultimate symbol of massive dollars spent) and declaring the war over when it had barely begun.
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
In the last 10 years:
1. How many Americans have died in terrorist attacks?
2. How many have died in auto accidents?
3. Where should we be putting our money?
Everybody at DHS and TSA -- heck, everybody in the government or who votes for somebody in the government -- should read Wasp, by Eric Frank Russell.
http://www.amazon.com/Wasp-Eric-Frank-Russell/dp/0575070951
It's about a spy whose job is to do exactly what Al Qaeda is doing to us. If people read it and discussed it, maybe they'd see how this sort of thing is supposed to work, and exactly how perfectly we're falling for it.
From this perspective, what the 'war on terror' costs, the most expensive item on the balance sheet should be the lost opportunities to spend all those lives, time, and treasure on something more constructive. Those billions of dollars could instead have been spent on anything from small business tax incentives, to scientific research, to foreign aid to develop foreign markets for American goods. The money circulates, whether spent on body scanners or on school supplies, but it probably could have circulated to better effect.
Granted that TSA has gotten over-zealous, and the naked-picture scanners are way over the top, but these things seem due for correction.
The more important thing is a long-term goal and policy of promoting self-representation and local justice in the world as a whole (and this should be done at the expense of working w/ governments which don't allow such). Now that the world isn't strongly divided into camps defined by the Cold War, the U.S. needs to make case-by-case decisions, choosing whom to work with on their own merits.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
No, they didn't. We gave them up.
No, the people calling themselves "The US Government" are abridging our natural rights, often in ways that enrich their friends.
Who's really doing the most damage here?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I've always thought terrorists could get a lot more bang for their buck by using much less extravagant means. You don't need to crash a jet into a building; just replicate the D.C. sniper from a few years ago across 50 different U.S. cities. Target local government officials, police officers, women, children, etc. All you need is to get some guys with marksmanship training into the country then get some high-powered rifles into their hands. Instruct them to take their own lives if capture is imminent. I have a feeling this tactic would go a lot further towards "instilling fear" in the U.S. populace on a day-to-day basis than the plane crashing thing.
No matter how hard terrorists try, what if there is a disease that will wipe out 1/2 of the world's population in our lifetime anyway? This disease causes people to spontaneously fall into comas, go blind, become covered in open sores, spontaneously lose limbs, and die horrible deaths. And no, I am not talking about AIDS.
The media, public opinion, and policy makers have shown no interest in this incurable disease.
What if scientists say that half of Americans will get this disease in the next 10 years, 1 out of 4 Chinese are already affected by it, and 1 out of 3 Nepalese are affected? Maybe we are in the midst of the 21st Century Black Plague, and nobody realized it.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=122611
http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa0908292
http://myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=25199
The real plan is more subtle and the real goal is more insidious. The ultimate goal is to make Islam the dominant religion in the world, and make sharia law the primary legal system. The plan is to destabilize economies or just let them fall apart on their own (such as in many African countries today) and then move in with massive quantities of money to build infrastructure, revitalize the economy, etc. all in the name of Islam. The Islamic benefactors will then be viewed as benefactors and will gain influential positions in government, eventually in positions where they can enact their legal "reforms" to bring the country's laws closer and closer to sharia law and bring society closer to their ideal as defined by Islam. It will be a slow process so as not to cause alarm, though in smaller and less influential countries the changes may be done more rapidly because, I hate to say, the majority of the world simply won't care what happens to some really, really poor African country that is not even a tiny blip on the economic or political radar. Read the quote that Schneier had about one Al Quaeda "dollar" spent "defeating" millions of US dollars. The point is to cause economic instability and then have Islamic "benefactors" come in and save the day, at the cost of altering our culture to meet their requirements. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to explore the potential implications that this could have on US, Mexican, and Canadian societies. (Canada and Mexico will eventually be targets, my friends - they're just going after us first because we have more economic and political power, but I doubt they'll be satisfied until they control everything, and Canada and Mexico both have so much to offer that they should be fairly high on the list of next targets.)
Even though total traffic deaths are declining, the portion due to cell-phone distractions is increasing to 6K a year, 16% of total, or two 9/11s every year. People was "zero risk" terrorism, but do dangerous things every time they drive.
"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich."
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Vast amounts of effort are spent to find that one American in 10,000 or more willing to implement a terror attack in the USA against civilians. Volunteers are much easier to find in Muslim countries where there is more anger.
I personally think that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with either Islam or with any legitimate grievances Middle Eastern governments may have with the US government. I think that the US government is paying scumbags like Bin Laden to mount the occcasional terror attack against the US in order to supply the US government with boogeymen it can use to justify its continued efforts to dismantle the Constitution and reduce the American people to serfdom, since the US government can no longer use Commies as an excuse. Islamic terrorism is the ultimate false-flag operation.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
What you're missing here is that the Islamist terrorists are funded by Saudi Islamists, who in turn are funded by petroleum sales to everyone else, including us. It doesn't matter if the terrorists spend a million here or there. These people have the funds to spend billions on themselves on a whim -- and they do so. It is literally nothing to them to toss a million dollars out the window. Nor does it concern them to expend foot soldiers. They're a dime a dozen in countries that "educate" using the Koran and enforce their miserable goat-age ideas with Sharia "law."
We're doing the wrong things. We have been since day one. The problem is centered in Saudi Arabia and Islam, in that order. If we want this to stop, we have to make their actions cost them something that will matter to them. And that most definitely isn't at the level of the chanting morons who do the dirty work, or physically any part or parcel of Iraq or Afghanistan.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The fly-a-plane-into-a-building attack already didn't work the fourth time. Once people knew that was a mode of attack, it stopped working. No more security needed be done, not even locking the cockpits.
Tobacco companies killed more people in the USA in 2001 than terrorists, by a considerable margin. So where did we spend our money? Invading Afghanistan(!), to punish a government (our former allies) who correctly concluded that they physically couldn't hand over the organizers. So now we've been there for almost 10 years, and spent uncounted billions of dollars, and we can't catch them either.
It's plain woolly-headed thinking; acting like sheep.
We need a Sarek to start preaching Logic.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
...then you should ban flights out of Mexico.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
There's of course the tiny little issue :
a) you're right, there's no threat, and lifting security precautions won't change a thing
b) you're wrong, there is a threat, and lifting security precautions means a weekly re-run of 9/11
If b) is true you're asking thousands of people to die just so you can have a little easier time at an airport. And, frankly, anyone reading the news knows perfectly well b) is true.
What you say isn't true, btw, you have the option of paying enough to charter a flight and avoid the continental U.S. altogether. The problem isn't what the sovereign united states do, the problem is that you are prepared to accept any amount of discomfort for a few bucks.
War is just a way for the ruling class to murder surplus men. Let the politicians kill each other instead, either directly or through the wars of assassins Frank Herbert depicted in Dune.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Al Queda is 90% myth. It exists, in a sense, because loosely-organized terrorist groups get a lot of publicity and notoriety mileage for nothing but calling themselves that. Any group of dickheads in any country can do it and be taken seriously.
Western governments - and the US in particular - encourage the myth because it gives the public a mysterious and sinister enemy to focus on, like THRUSH or CHAOS. That's a prerequisite if you're going to use terrorism as a pretext for spending $trillions on war and your friends in the private sector who help you wage it.
If you want to balance the budget, disband the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. And stop using the Coast Guard to enforce Prohibition, which should have been repealed decades ago.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Vlad Tepes would have known what to do about the Taliban.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
It seems people are still believing the lie that the terrorist are out to "destroy our freedom". The terrorists do not "win" when we add security to our airports, or undermine the privacy and rights of our citizens. They're not fighting us because they "hate our freedom". They win when we get out of their country, and stop supporting their enemies (Israel, moderate muslims, etc).
Here I sit, fresh out of mod points ... my compliments, sir!
On the other hand, at least some of the trillions we've spent are an inevitable part of defending ourselves in a world where there are always people trying to enslave you.
Someone is trying to enslave the US? You mean, other than the politicians who use those puny terror attacks as an excuse to grab more power?
Go back and read history. Osama bin Laden has the capability to fight us because we armed him to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. He wants to fight us because we have armies in Muslim countries. We have armies there because Saddam invaded a neighbor and Bush the first had to help his oil friends, even tho Saddam had also been "our" ally. Saddam was our ally because Iran was our enemy; we supplied him with chemicals and all sorts of other weapons. Iran was our enemy because they held our embassy staff hostage after their revolution. They had a revolution because our friend, the Shah, was a horrific dictator. The Shah was in power because we put him there. We put him there because the previous semi-dictator had nationalized the oil industry. He nationalized the oil industry because the Brits and Americans were robbing them blind.
On and on ... go back and look at American history. Up until the 1880s, the US was pretty isolated and pretty much left other countries alone, other than war with Mexico several times to steal their land, and genocide against the natives, but that was acceptable practice back then.
Then the country got powerful enough that the power grabbing control freaks, and the robber barons who wanted more power, and the media magnates who wanted more power, agitated for a bigger military, specifically the navy, with the stated rationale of keeping the Europeans from invading. Never mind that they couldn't have, and didn't want to. The unstated but still bogus reason was to keep the Europeans out of South American, the Monroe Doctrine from the early 1800s, 75 years before. Never mind that this was also control freakery and power grabbing, it was also bogus.
But we had a nice modern navy ... well gee, what to do with it, can't let it sit idle, let's wage war ... take Cuba from Spain (with the excuse of liberating them, gee that sounds familiar), and the Philippines comes along for the ride, now we have an empire, now we need a bigger navy AND army to protect it ....
Everything, absolutely every single foreign problem the US has had, stems from a previous bandaid fix to the previous problem, all going back to power grabs and control freaks.
No one wants to invade or enslave the US. They just want the US to leave them alone. No doubt other power grabbers and control freaks would control those parts of the world that we now control, but so what? Saddam didn't want to destroy Kuwait's oil; he wanted to sell it just as the Kuwaities were selling it. China doesn't want to stop selling rare earths, they just want to sell them at a better price, and quite possible make products directly instead of letting someone else sell the finished goods.
Try a thought experiment. What would happen if the US withdrew all military forces from foreign countries, immediately. Europe wouldn't collapse. South Korea would have to stand up for itself, maybe finally move their capitol city away from where it is held hostage to North Korean artillery. China would have to reign in its supposed ally because it could no longer rely on the US bogeyman to scare people and bluster; they would have to face reality that North Korea is not worth sustaining. Iraq and Afghanistan would go back to what they were and will be, once and future piss poor countries wun by dictators.
And the rest of the world would run out of excuses to hate the US. I have traveled some. I have heard plenty of complaints about the US government, but the only complaints about American tourists are on the petty side. NO ONE wants to enslave or invade the US. They want US to stop enslaving and invading tem.
It's pretty damned simple if you follow a bit of history and open your eyes.
Infuriate left and right
Last time I checked, you can't catch Diabetes from someone else who has it.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Guerrilla warfare is using the huge surface area of a large defensible position as an advantage. Modern forces rely on force multipliers for effectiveness, which means their control is very dense. Surface area expands exponentially. Add the two together, and you can see why Guerilla Warfare is increasingly effective.
In other words, terrorism isn't causing anything. We were always vulnerable to these attacks, and they could have come from any source. I did not read TFA, but the summary's analysis that economic damages are much higher than the direct attack is pretty self evident. All terrorist have to do is make people feel vulnerable, and that is the highest damage. The destruction is minuscule. There are plenty of ways to make people feel vulnerable, and many of them don't even require air planes, bombs, or even guns. Eventually they will start using those techniques, and the only thing we can do to stop them is begin accepting that it will happen.
The only true defense we have is our own proliferation and uncaring.
How about some disgruntled kitchen employee with Hep-C jerking off in the cottage cheese?
Sounds like cheap terrorism to me.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Never said it did. The risk factors for the disease cannot realistically be alleviated. The repeated experience of public health policy makers has been that telling people to "eat less" and "get more exercise" is useless. But nobody has come up with better ideas, so that remains the "recommendation".
"When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."
And that is why (a) we all should ensure we have immediate access to strong defensive capabilities and (b), we should be able to use them in property- and self-defense. No criminal should know that the odds favor their being able to seriously encroach on the liberties of someone else and find them unarmed and helpless. All the police do is show up later, and half the time they would try and make you the criminal if you do the right thing. "Guy broke into my home, so I shot him." "Oh, you shot him? Do you have a "permit" for your gun? Was he all the way inside your house? Was your life in danger?" That's how far we have fallen. I'll tell you what, someone comes in a window in my house and it's going to take a lot of rags to clean their insides off my floor. And I'd have zero inclination to call the cops, either. I don't need them second guessing my family's safety, or trying to tell me that the life of some lowlife is worth more than whatever harm they might have caused if I'd let them proceed; not to mention what they'd do the next time they invaded someone else's home. Cross my threshold with clear intent to do wrong to people or property, and you instantly lose your right to breathe in the court of liberty.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
When the British Royalty effectively traded its power to pay for its wars, who ended up richer? There is a touch of irony in that the crusades were the first of these adventures which bled power away from the ruling class.
That haemorrhage (insert haemophilia crack here) resulted in the "royal puppet family" who to this day have to perform public rituals of humiliation to remind everyone they have no say in matters.
And we let the our own government get away with irradiating our bodies at no benefit to the traveler.
Thanks, terrorists, for buttering up an incompetent bureaucracy to give itself a reason to take a power trip.
thanks to the TSA security procedures, we now get free handjobs, while still alive. The terrorists will have to wait till they get to Paradise and have a turn with
the 72 virgins (hey, maybe that's how they remain virgins - HJs only)
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Isn't terrorism the mechanism for a small under-funded group to fight a large over-funded group--it's often the only means left to them.
This is why it's used during every war--always derided by the other side. When the fight is terribly over-balanced, it tends to be the only way.
If America were placed in the same position, most Americans would choose to fight using terrorism.
Remember, the whole point of this has been clearly stated (if ignored or even hidden by our media). We are supporting a very corrupt, overbearing and violent Saudi regime with military might. If we weren't there, the people could take back the government and rebuild it, or at least force some kind of voting, but since it's easier for us to deal with the current ruling family, we keep them in power and ignore their torturing, murder and human rights abuses of their populous.
The terrorist's only demand (at least the only one I've heard that doesn't seem made up like "they hate our freedoms") has been to remove our military from their land.
If some stronger foreign government (aliens?) had a base in Washington and was keeping Obama (or Bush, pick your poison) in power even after we had voted him out, I'd hope most Americans would have the will to fight it--using terror if necessary. Heck, this is the story line of Independence Day, terrorism to achieve a goal. They killed an entire city (civilization?) of non-combatants in that movie.
The Chechen: What are you going to do with all your money?
The Joker: See, I'm a man of simple tastes. I like dynamite, and gunpowder...
[the Chechen watches, appalled, as Joker's thugs pour gasoline on his mountain of cash]
The Joker: And gasoline! Do you know what all of these things have in common? They're cheap!
The Tyrant and the Terrorist, never have two people needed each other so dearly. Without the terrorist, the tyrant loses control, as his subjects grow weary of oppression. The terrorist creates the greater fear, the immediate danger, the peril that cowers the public into the grip of the tyrant. The tyrant enslaves all and motivates the few defiant ones to incite chaos, which generates fame, a terrorist's drug of choice.
The two are never far apart, usually "friends of friends" or even relatives. Terrorists are rarely captured, and tyrant rarely assassinated. Professional courtesy.
What breaks this viscous cycle? Once, it was old age. Now, who knows? The irony? Both believe they are doing good by preventing anarchy. Often, it is true, as the masses have no backbone to stand up for themselves. Easier to play the victim.
diarrhea - highly infectious condition
diarrtea - great standby remedy, available in most drugstores
diarrtes - distrear, distressed rear - see anagram
diaretes - too disgusting to mention
diabetes - oops, there we go again.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html
I can't find a cite offhand for "We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security".
He talks about all the costs to America. But what about the costs to the terrorists? Oh, they are far from defeated but they are not exactly in sterling form. Their leaders get picked off, their recruits are so crap they can only fight with suicide bombers because no soldier survives long enough to learn that you do NOT hold up a car with an RPG. They can't fight an open war anymore because anytime they do, they get killed.
And word-wide the jihadist message goes ignored. ALL this campaigning and all they got to show for it is a couple of half-assed attempts. Far more of them have been killed then they have managed to kill. Countries like Iran claim happily it is the west that is after them but their neighbours are urging the US to bomb the shit out of them. So much for Islamic solidarity.
And what is this all really costing the US? Huge army bill? Also happens to employ a lot of people, in the army AND the arms factories. Its military tech is thoroughly tested and it now has probably the most well trained army in the world, with tons of combat experience. Before all this, US tactics were based on its only ally to have extensive modern combat experience, Israel. Read up on IDF tactics and you can see how the US copied it. Now they got their own tactics based on their own hardware and strategic capabilities. Far far better then say Russian or Chinese soldiers. Security? Against employing a lot of people and for all the bitching, the fast majority of people barely notice it. Oh sure it is a hassle when you get searched, but I got searched decades ago travelling to britain on the ferry. Is it destroying the economy? No. Then what is the cost?
So far it also works, no successful attacks.
The economy down the drain? Yes... and? It has been down the drain before regardless of terrorists. It will recover, always has. Some people just don't seem to get that the US can't go bankrupt. Iceland did and what happened? NOTHING. The world isn't nearly as dramatic as people like to think.
No Mr Schneier, if you want to show the true costs of war, then you need to count all the costs, to both sides. War is good business. May not be nice, but only an idiot believes business is about being nice.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Um, your forgetting that Afghanistan and many similar countries where militant groups flourish are very poor.
They dont have enough money to build water and sewer systems. You cannot expect them to to have the same infrastructure of registration offices and weapons enforcement that the USA does.
If someone is shot in Afghanistan, there is no CSI team to match the bullet or take fingerprints. Lets go round up everyone who fits the description and you will end up with half the nation.
NATO had to adapt their military training for the Afghan army because there were no high-tech gadgets.
The militants in poor countries are often better armed and funded than the countries own police and army. Forget education and hospitals, most people would just be happy if the police had more guns than the local thugs.
Something else you have to consider is the fear factor itself. Anyone can wear a hood and extort money to buy or steal weapons. The fact that groups really have carried out hijacks and bombs and kidnappings adds validity to the fear. So even if you clear all the terrorists from an area, whats to stop cousin Hassan from trading his goat for an AK-47 and calling himself Taliban?
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
We all agree that the best, long run answer would have been to say, "shit happens, carry on," while pursuing small scale, extremely targeted activities using CIA an military special operations personnel.
However, would this have sold well to the American people?
Sure, huge bounties and letters of marque would have been cheaper. But, without the huge loss that followed going it the "hard power" way is there any way people would have known it was cheaper?
If back in 2001 the presidents response had been, "shit happens," carry on, there is no possibility the he would have win re-election. Further, whoever did win would win because they would have promised to do what we are doing right now. We would be no better off.
Internet Tough Guy detected.
What you're forgetting is their whole rationale -- the TSA is "just" an agent of the AIRLINES, private entities to whom you submit in order to partake of their services. Ignore the federal regulation of the airlines and the fact that the search guidelines are also federal in nature -- they do.
Just be glad you don't have to submit to backscatter-xray/enthusiastic-groping when you cross state lines in a car.
Yet.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
This disease causes people to spontaneously fall into comas, go blind, become covered in open sores, spontaneously lose limbs, and die horrible deaths.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
That article is completely wrong. It's actually the other way around since the real terrorist in this world is the US. It incurs massive costs for the US to go around and terrorize other countries in the middle east. As a result the US owes insane amounts to China and Japan.
Get 30 guys. Go to DC, or New York, or LA. Give each a single smoke bomb. At a predesignated time (high-noon local time being optimal) have each individual go into a separate McDonalds or whatever, and set off that smoke bomb. Leave behind laminated cards: "Meet our demands or next time it will be Sarin." (Or Anthrax, or whatever).
Never take responsibility. Never make a demand. Disband your organization immediately and utterly, then walk away.
That is how you sow terror.
Not one life lost. Huge media value. No clear enemy. No certainty of the nature of a threat. And you could do it by organizing the opposite of a flash-mob. (e.g. a flash dispersal...?) And what more American target than a fast food chain. And how better to threaten than by distributed action? Blowing up a big target is flashy, but it isn't as good as making people afraid to go to their neighborhood Circle-K.
I can actually think of dozens of ways to do this stuff.
The single biggest reason that Terrorists will never win is that Religious Wackos are not allowed to play D & D, and if they were, they would not remain religious wackos of the dangerous sort. Every D&D, GURPS, or whatever system "gamer" (e.g. table-top free-form tactical gamers, not console computer mindless gamers) I have ever known could utterly _thwart_ any common security practice they see. The entire mind set of gamers is to invent scenarios and then challenge their peers to defeat them. "How would I beat this checkpoint" or even "how could I use this checkpoint to my advantage" is a reflex thought to anybody who has played more than 200 hours of table-top RPG.
On the morning of September 11 I was awoken by a call from my mom. My housemate and I went to the basement and watched the coverage live. We were both gamers. We had the over-under on it being islamic, and how the cross-country flights were chosen for their fuel payload in _minutes_. (I thought there was a 10% chance it was the McVeigh people because of the military-industrial complex nature of the targets, but "survivalists" are set-and scurry bombers, not suicide bombers). By the end of the first hour we had predicted the USA PATRIOT act though we were idealistic and didn't see the torture and craven anti-american actions of the Bush Administration comming for days.
The reason gamers would never be terrorists is because the "how to make fearful people fearful" task is nowhere near as entertaining as the variations of the Zombie Hoard problem or "who and what would I need to rebuild civilization" exercise.
I get nervous in the TSA line because that is the optimal weak point in any airport. The right action there could close an airport for days or weeks, and by definition nobody has been checked for active payload yet.
Had we any brains, we would get the Israelis to design our airport security etc. By the time you are in their airport you have already been vetted like three times and they divide up the people into small segregated groups of no more than like 20.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Just buy their oil, and that's it. Really, what other business does the US have over there?
Don't even support Israel, we have enough problems of our own.
So that would give the mid-east crazies nothing to complain about, right?
Pull US troops out of Asia, and Europe, also. As long as we can get one nuclear missile to their capital, they won't do anything.
Maybe the US should clean up it's own back yard, and guard it's own borders for a change?
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
and business* is good.
* - via corrupt Micheal Chertoff-style government contracts
what other business does the US have over there?
Other than fulfilling biblical prophecies?
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
British people are all cowards these days? I'd like you to walk into a British army base or even a town centre on a Saturday night and suggest that to a random sample of the population and see what the response is. Or even walk into a cancer patients ward and suggest that.
Probably true that we are more interested in workplace safety, I am not sure this is a bad thing though. My experience is that the people who most complain about workplace safety are those most removed from serious workplace danger: office workers who sit in front of computers all day tend to think it's a waste of time, steel workers, oil rig workers, fire fighters etc tend to think its really valuable.
I can imagine if an invader was on nearby shores 22 miles away as they were in 1940, then yes, I can imagine "Britain entering a war that would cost hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties again, however pressing the need or however good the cause?".
Which is exactly what T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) realized and taught his (Arab) brothers-in-arms during WWI: a few bombs on the rail line disables the Turkish transportation infrastructure. Keep doing that and one gets a Turkish army bogged down by relatively few soldiers.
Cranky educator.