Proper Perspective

I just destroyed the address book on my computer and once again had to revert to a months old backup. I am very unhappy, and wishing that the house had already sold so I could buy myself a new backup drive and be automatically backing up again, and even better wishing that Leopard was already out so I could fix this with a few clicks in Time Machine. (Cause the .Mac iSync backup of addresses is completely useless.)

In any case, to distract myself from this issue, I just want to note something I came across the other day that I think describes my recent thoughts on the whole no liquids on planes thing. It is an article from the Cato Institute from Fall of 2004. Here is the main gist:

A False Sence of Insecurity? (pdf)
(John Mueller, Cato Institute)

Throughout all this, there is a perspective on terrorism that has been very substantially ignored. It can be summarized, somewhat crudely, as follows:

• Assessed in broad but reasonable context, terrorism generally does not do much damage.
• The costs of terrorism very often are the result of hasty, ill-considered, and overwrought reactions.

A sensible policy approach to the problem might be to stress that any damage terrorists are able to accomplish likely can be absorbed, however grimly. While judicious protective and policing measures are sensible, extensive fear and anxiety over what may at base prove to be a rather limited problem are misplaced, unjustified, and counterproductive.

(via Boing Boing)

A little later on in the article:

Until 2001, far fewer Americans were killed in any grouping of years by all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning, and almost none of those terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.

Some of this is definitional. When terrorism becomes really extensive, we generally no longer call it terrorism, but war. But Americans seem to be concerned mainly about random terror, not sustained warfare. Moreover, even using an expansive definition of terrorism and including domestic terrorism in the mix, it is likely that far fewer people were killed by terrorists in the entire world over the last 100 years than died in any number of unnoticed civil wars during the century.

The entire article (5 printed pages) is well worth the read. It should be required reading for anybody making policy related to anti-terrorism.

The main truth that rings loud and clear is that FAR more damage is caused by non-sensical overreactions than could be caused directly even in the wildest dreams of the terrorists.

In a true “war on terror” we would be educating ourselves on why terrorism is no more a threat than the increased deer population in our suburbs and therefore refuse to submit to irrational fear. We would not be turning our lives upside down, readjusting all of our priorities, giving up all sorts of civil liberties, compromising our principles AND making air travel increasingly miserable by the day (with only a psychological increase in security, not a real one).

By doing the crazy kind of pseudo-security measures happening at airports worldwide, we end up causing far more damage (just in a different way) than if someone had indeed succeeded in blowing up a plane. The only difference is that damage is diffused over many millions of people over the course of months rather than a few hundred people over an instant. But the damage is just as real. It’s just the other kind, being more visible and more concentrated gets more attention. But it shouldn’t.

Especially since the types of things we are doing (no liquids on planes) at best only force those wishing to do damage to do it somewhere else, or using a different method. It does not actually STOP anything. Make it hard to bring explosives on a plane? They can blow up the security checkpoint, or a school, or a mall. Or just put the bomb in checked luggage (which is STILL not as completely checked as it should be).

This is not to minimize how horrible even a single death is to the people involved. But when making policy, one has to look at the bigger picture.

And in the bigger picture… with the crazy overreactions we are doing nothing but hurting ourselves in the long run. We are not helping anything.