Matthew Yglesias is bang on. Improved security is of course desirable, but at some point we have to ask ourselves: precisely how large is the real threat? Security has improved since 9/11, but a vast, VAST majority of the country is simple impossible to secure. Schools, churches, shopping malls, stadiums, parks, etc, etc... Not only can't we secure them, I'm not sure we'd want to even if we could. Nothing short of a total police state would allow us to have anything even remotely close to total security.
So yes, a vast majority of this country is not secured. And yet, no attacks. Why? I've been saying for some time now what Matt says here:
| The answer, it seems to me, must be that only a very, very small number of people actually want to engage in terrorist attacks on American soil.
The alternative "fight in Baghdad so we don't fight in Boston" theory doesn't make any real sense. The American presence in Iraq isn't a physical barrier to would-be terrorists' movements. On the "flypaper" variant of this theory, would-be terrorists would have to be making a monumental error of judgment in thinking that somehow blowing stuff up in Iraq would have a bigger impact than blowing stuff up in America. Rather than either of those, it seems that the relatively large number of people willing to fight against American operations in Iraq are just that -- people willing to fight against American operations in Iraq rather than people willing to kill Americans as such. |
If true, it means that our strategy, tactics, and rhetoric in the "war on terror" have all been wildly off base. Not to beat a dead horse here, but... we began heading in the right direction with Afghanistan, but since then have just completely lost the plot. And we can't afford to wait another 3 years before we begin to seriously reconsider our course of action.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: SOFT TARGETS.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blog.alexwhalen.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/127
Subscribe to this blog's feed
Leave a comment