Overreacting to Terrorism

by Tom Kando

After the Boston Marathon bombing  I suggested - sacrilegiously - that terrorism is LESS important than we are generally made to believe. Let me  add to my argument.

(By the way, I am a criminologist and I taught the Violence and Terrorism class at Cal State for about a decade. While this does not make me  infallible, it does mean that I am at least as well informed as the next guy).

Here is my main thesis again: Terrorism has come to loom very large in modern life NOT only  because of the heinous acts that are perpetrated by heinous individuals from time to time, but also  because of our OVERREACTION to those acts.

Right now, the likes of Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Charles Krauthammer are clamoring for the extra-constitutional treatment of a terrorist suspect - this time Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber. They feel that he should be tried as an enemy combatant, not as a US citizen. Bypassing or altering the US Constitution in reaction to a heinous terrorist act is just one example of what I mean by over-reaction.

Don’t misunderstand me: I want this man to be severely punished, and I am confident that he will be. But what I am focusing on is the  disproportionate reaction that tends to take place after each act of terrorism.

9-11 was followed by two full-fledged wars, and America’s never-ending involvement in morasses such as Yemen, Somalia, Mali, etc. America’s response to 9-11 has been astronomically costly and it has arguably weakened America more than its enemies.

Check out my Dec. 2, 2011, post “What Osama Bin Laden Achieved.” in which I quote an article by Max Westerman in the  Aug./Sept. 2011 issue of   Maarten!

According to Westerman, the greatest damage to America  resulted from the subsequent War on Terror, i.o.w. from America’s  reaction to 9/11. By some measure, the 9/11 attack by  19 soldiers armed with box cutters can be viewed as the most successful military operation in history:

            1. It brought the world’s greatest superpower to the edge of bankruptcy.
            2. It caused America to weaken  many of its liberal ideals.
            3. It created a permanent feeling of fear and  paranoia. George W.  Bush put Osama Bin Laden on a pedestal, as if he possessed the  power to threaten the Western way of life. The President  announced  a struggle without end against terrorism. No mean achievement, for a bunch of cave dwellers!
            4. Two exorbitantly costly wars, one of which had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, the other one still dragging on at a cost of $2 billion per week. Imagine what America could have done with the wasted  $1.2 trillion for  its crumbling infrastructure,   its growing poverty, its unemployment - all the things which  threaten to rob it of its number-one status!
            5. America has transformed  itself  into a national security state. There are 1,270 government agencies  and 1,930 companies spread over 10,000  locations involved in the fight against terrorism.  30,000 employees do nothing but monitor telephone calls. Homeland Security produces 50,000 reports per year. Nobody knows how many people and how much money are devoted to Homeland Security, or how many organizations, many of which duplicate each other.

And keep in mind that the probability of an American dying from terrorism is 1 in 6 million - far lower than  accident, illness, a stray bullet or almost anything else.

At least, if all of this worked! But what works is NOT the clumsy, lumbering invasion of entire countries, or the massive shutdown of entire cities, putting the lives of  millions of people on hold, or the indiscriminate bombing of entire villages by drones.

What works is pinpointed commando action, like the brilliant operation that killed Bin Laden. And the collaboration of an alert citizenry, competent law enforcement and responsible media, as just superbly displayed in Boston.  It took society less than five days to track down the suspects. We should be proud of our law enforcement and the citizens of Boston, not second-guess and play the political blame game, as has already begun.

Arguably  the most catastrophic example of over-reaction to terrorism   happened just about a  century ago,  after the Bosnian terrorist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914: The Austro-Hungarian Empire (my own country of birth)  declared war on Serbia, Russia then mobilized, Germany followed suit, so did France and the UK, and World War One got under way. Add to that America’s entry into the war three years later, Germany’s defeat, the rise of the Soviet Union and the Third Reich, the Holocaust and World War Two: These were the consequences of a single murder!  Who knows what the world would be like today  if the powers had not reacted to the 1914 assassination by declaring war on each other.

Nonsense, you say: Acts of terrorism are rarely isolated incidents. When Princip murdered the Archduke, that was just the FUSE which  ignited  already long-simmering conflicts. It was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Similarly, you say,  the recent actions by Al Qaeda and assorted other jihadists and terrorists  are symptoms of underlying conditions in the world. Maybe so.

But that doesn’t invalidate my argument: When things such as the April 15  Boston bombing happen, we have a choice: We can make things worse or we can approach the problem constructively. I believe that this time around, the crisis was handled superbly by all parties concerned.  Now, it’s time to return to normalcy ASAP. Political recriminations, for example, would be inane. Nor is it clear that we  need   a whole  spate of new laws and security measures. The Hippocratic oath applies: First, do no harm. leave comment here