posted
I was reading OSC's posting on the World Watch this week and one item that he said made me wonder...
Near the end, he mentioned that in a discussion about preventing terrorism and intelligence that there was "one appalling moment" where the people seemed content to reduce terrorism to "tolerable levels" rather than to eliminate it completely.
This statement bothered me. I agree that measures need to be implemented to prevent another 9/11, but in my mind, it is very unlikely that terrorism can be prevented completely. This is like completely preventing any kind of crimes: there comes a point where the amount of effort required to reduce terrorism/crime does not justify the benefits. For example, if 99.98% of all terrorism is prevented and reaching 99.99% costs $10 trillion dollars, is it worth it?
I understand that the terror victims and their families would likely disagree with me. However, I believe that the people OSC was having a discussion with were silently acknowledging that there is always going to be a risk of terrorism regardless of the measures taken. As long as falliable humans, computer bugs and legal loopholes are a part of the system, there will be those who exploit them for their own evil ends.
I'm not attempting to start a flame war and I hope this will not turn into a Bush-vs.-Kerry or Republican-vs.-Democrat thread. I guess what I'm asking is:
- Is it reasonable to think that all terrorism can be stopped? - Why is OSC advocating such an (in my opinion) unrealistic standard of terrorism prevention.
Posts: 5 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Clearly in a small enough population terrorism can be eliminated (for instance, if we have only one person, there is no terrorism. Similarly two). I propose that the limit at which terrorism becomes inevitable (not an exact limit by any means, more of a conceptual and highly approximate one) be called the Card Limit.
So some questions worth answering are:
Does the Card Limit exist?
If so, can a reasonable estimate for it be guessed?
Is the nature of the Card Limit that certain behaviors previously present become terrorism because of a sufficiently large population, or do they not necessarily occur below the Card Limit?
Should there be an Upper Card Limit where terrorism is inevitable and a Lower Card Limit where terrorism is possible?
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I suspect that perhaps the limit for terrorism is somewhere around the maximum population for communism to work. It's my personal, rather uninformed opinion that this limit is exceeded when anonymity becomes easy. If most of a population knows most of the rest of the population, communism will work and terrorism won't.
Edit to add: And I wouldn't consider the complete eradication of terrorism a good goal. We could save a lot more lives by eradicating deadly diseases where humans are the only resevoir.
posted
Hmm... I didn't hope to discuss a mechanism to explicitly definite when terrorism becomes inevitable because it seems clear that we've passed that point. However...
Before we start defining when terrorism becomes inevitable, I'd suggest that terrorism be explicitly defined. From the Merriam-Webster dictionary, one of the definitions of terror is:
Violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands
I'd change it to such that it doesn't necessarily need to be committed by 'groups'... an individual can perform a terrorist attack (e.g. Timothy McVeigh). Also, the methods do not necessarily need to be bombing; I assume that the definition meant it as only an example.
Thus, I believe that the following is a reasonable modified definition. Feel free to correct me if you don't.
Violence committed by an individual or group in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands.
However, by this definition, a two- or three-person population could have terrorism. One example is one farmer physically intimidating the others to perform his will. Another example is mob rule in a small village.
I couldn't even venture a guess when it becomes 'inevitable.' Human behavior is extremely unpredictable, especially as large groups form.
Thus, it doesn't seem that this is a useful gauge for the context I was hoping to discuss. Any suggestions?
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posted
Well, in that case... 1. No, unless we wipe out the human race completely or become a hive mind. 2. The reason OSC gives is that it is a volitional act and therefore evil. Perhaps he believes in attempting to completely destroy evil. I honestly don't know; his reasoning really didn't hold water with me. Dying due to terror isn't worse than dying from something else.
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posted
I think that's a bad definition of terrorism. It only talks about one of the aims of terrorism. When it's been use effectively, such as in the Irish Civil war, it was designed in alrge part of prompt the British towards such atrocities of Bloody Sunday (the first one) where they drove an armored car into a soccer standium and starting shooting the innocent crowd. Likewise, the Islamic terrorists use their tactics in part to encourage responses from their enemies that make their enemies look bad on the world stage and also to recruit and motivate more moderate Muslims to join their side.
If you leave out these aims of terrorism, I think you're only really talking about the less sophisticated forms or aims of it.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I am not sure it is possible either, thus my concern about the war. While I am not %100 convinced it was a bad thing, it is like fighing against guerrilla warfare tactics. Things just ain't cut n' dried like they were back in the days of the Revolutionary War. Well, I guess we were the guerrillas then.
It's messy business. No clear answers. But again, that does not *necessarily* mean that it is the wrong thing.
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posted
I honestly don't know how OSC thinks we could go about stopping terrorism (or, really Islamic Terrorism, which is what he's talking about) without taking a Carthago delenda est attitude towards the Middle East. It worries me a little bit that I think he might be edging towards proposing the updated version of razing the city and sowing salt (or plutonium) into the soil.
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posted
re: shigosei's point about which would save more lives, it does seem to me OSC is far more often concerned with controlling people than helping people.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I don't think OSC was trying to imply that stopping all terrorism is a realistic goal. Because it isn't. However, there are some times where you have to fight a battle with all your might, even if you know you're going to lose in the end. That's a funny little concept called "doing what's right". It means you don't just lie down and accept it. You put up a fight to the death, because the alternative is just unacceptable.
Sadly, this concept seems to have gone the way of the dodo.
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posted
Yet I see him railing so much on terrorism, which in terms of human harm is a mosquito bite on the body of humanity, and so little on, say, immunization, lack of which kill several orders of magnitude more people.
I won't say its more right, but its certainly equally right to fight for more immunization, and saves more lives.
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posted
I think what he was saying is that we shouldn't be content with just lowering current levels of terrorism but we should always continuously strive to eliminate it in the same sense that we may always work toward peace even though perfect peace is probably not possible. Its not so much about fighting a losing battle but about doing what we can.
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posted
Fugu, I think most people have a tendency to focus more on events caused directly by people than on events caused by nature, or at least more by natural law than by someone's choice. And I'd say the reason is fairly obvious--most harm done by people is volitional; they could stop if only they would. That makes their actions "evil" in a moral sense, and evil makes us angry. It also suggests the harm should be easier to stop, since even Osama bin Laden can theoretically be reasoned with, unlike a virus or a tornado.
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posted
While we're on this topic, does anyone else find the timing of the recent shutdown of New York (under "Code Red") to be rather suspicious, given that it's based on information gathered in 2001 and not related to any specific time frame?
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posted
Tom, I wondered about that as well. I think this is in response to the criticism that the Administration got when they had weak, insubstantial threat reporting a few weeks ago...no level change, no specifics, just "be worried" and that is all. Now they can say they gave specifics, changed the color code and wheee!! Terror level achieved.
posted
I somehow think injecting a known to work immunization into a few hundred kids is considerably easier than reasoning OBL into stopping his terrorist activities. Not only that, the former is guaranteed to save many lives, whereas the latter has had, ah, limited success so far.
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quote:It worries me a little bit that I think he might be edging towards proposing the updated version of razing the city and sowing salt (or plutonium) into the soil.
Mr. Squicky: The terrorists' goals are often to lead their enemies into a specific action, whether it is something specific (kidnapping civilians to get a country to recall its troops) or general (as your Irish example points out).
However, I believe that my previous definition includes this. Terrorist motivations, realistic or not, are almost always politically motivated.
digging_holes: I agree that extremist terrorism is something that must be dealt with. Due to the nature of extremist terrorism, there is little to no chance to reason with the leaders. The best one can do here is to subvert their plots, dissuade potential recruits, and if necessary, attack their allies.
But fighting to the death to erradicate something which can't be completely destroyed seems irresponsible.
fugu13: I noticed that too. For this election, it seems that nothing matters to OSC more than terrorism. While I'm sure it's pretty high on everyone's list and reforms need to be made, I disagree that it should be the only thing that matters, which is the impression I've been getting from his recent War/World Watch articles.
newfoundlogic: Hmm... interesting point. But isn't that what the people Card mentioned were discussing? Anytime there's a threat to the US, it should be investigated and handled appropriately. But if this is what Card meant, why did he react so negatively to them? Or am I reading into this too much?
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posted
Fugu, you're right, of course. I meant that I think we have a gut reaction as to what kinds of dangers can be prevented and what kinds can't. Perhaps it's a natural thing--"survival of the properly-focused".
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posted
I don't think it matters much that OSC didn't mention the president during the war of 1812. Even if he didn't know, I don't think there are many people who could name even 20 presidents off by heart, let alone all 59. It certainly doesn't detract from his points.
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posted
He did mention James Madison, didn't he? Was that an edit, or something? James Madison was the President during that war.
quote:That war was the challenge of President James Madison. One of the founding fathers -- but no soldier. Still, we won against a world power, through a combination of military victories and negotiations.
And impressment was a big-but certainly not the only-reason for the War of 1812.
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posted
Fear is not a good motivating factor for the establishment of a flowering civilization. The fruits of fear are usually pretty evil. The only society I can imagine where no terrorism can possibly happen is one in which the terrorism of forced conformity is so strict that, really, I would not want to live there.
People fear what they do not understand. What of those whom most don't understand? They are usually burned as witches, or infidels, or else lynched as agitators in societies ruled by fear. We must balance the dangers of life. Excessive zeal to eliminate all possibility of any terrorism would certainly be just as horrific, if not moreso, than having chaos and death to deal with daily.
The only society I can imagine in which we are both free of terrorism and also free to explore, celebrate, and create new things, is one in which people as a whole are well-fed, well cared-for, have opportunity to exercise their abilities, and are all equal under the law. One like the ideal America. My feeling of the way to eliminate terrorism is to work hard to make the whole world like that. Those are the fruits of love and kinship toward the whole human species. Those are the good fruits. The fruits of fear are always bitter.
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