Terror

It's strange that media that originally attracted me for their humor have also turned into sources for serious thinking as well. Penn Jillette, The Daily Show, and Colbert all come to mind, along with one of my newest addictions, the show with zefrank.

After last week's liquid bomb threat, his video podcast hit the nail on the head. Fortunately, thanks to the zefrank wiki, I can easily quote the good bits:

"Now, the way I see it, you can't have terrorism without terror. The strategy of terrorism is to use isolated acts of violence to instill fear and confusion into the population at large. A small number of people can incapacitate a society by leveraging our inability to understand risk. [...snip...]

"As long as a small group of people can inflict mass panic across a large population, the tactic itself will remain viable. One way to deal a blow to the effectiveness of terrorism is to deal with the terror itself. [...snip...]

"Bush today said this country is safer today than it was prior to 9/11. Personally, I don't think he knows. Whether we like it or not, terrorist attacks on Americans are now part of the global reality. They will continue to happen. Many places around the globe have had to deal with a similar reality for years. India, Ireland, England, Spain, Russia, to name a few. In many cases, these societies have pulled together and not allowed isolated acts of violence to tear at their fiber. Like disease and the forces of nature, it's a risk that we have to rationally come to terms with. The government's responsibility is to make sure that fear and terror are not disproportionate to the reality of the situation."

Terror doesn't have to be based in devastating and destructive events like 9/11. Depending how things are handled, unsuccessful threats can be sufficient to create and perpetuate terror and its effects. (Somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan, someone is probably still laughing about the a bet that they could make a whole country of travelers take off their shoes.)

The liquid bombs were found long before they reached the airport in the UK. The kneejerk silliness of stopping hair gel and iPods at the airports in the US only served to raise the level of the sense of terror. (Can you spell "mid-term elections?") To me, these are evidence of our losing the "war on terror." Not only that, but even worse, we're being hit as much by "friendly fire" than by attacks real or imagined, successful or thwarted.