Thoughts on 9-11

[xiphias]

Terrorism is a political weapon. It's done to frighten populations into taking actions.

And, looked at that way, the 9-11 attacks have been spectacularly unsuccessful.

I mean, a year later, what are the real long-term effects of the attack? On a personal level, they're devastating -- many people lost people they care about. But on a political level, really, not much damage was done.

Are people more afraid than they were a year ago? Maybe. But not much. Not enough to really massively change how they live their lives. Not enough to matter to how the country really works.

Law enforcement? Okay, that's where we may really be hurt. One of the points of terrorism is to so unbalance a population that they are willing to allow their government to put rules in place that will harm them in the long run. And, on the surface, that appears to have happened some. But what's happened, with, for instance, the USA PATRIOT Act, was that the government got a bunch of powers that they'd wanted for years, and had been agitating for for years, and had been making progress in getting. And, fortunately, the courts are now turning around and reigning in the excesses of law enforcement. So that's not ending up as damaging as it could be.

Now, where a terrorist campaign really wants to hit a country is in its economy, and, sure, the economy of the US was shaken. But not from the terrorism. It was shaken before 9-11; the tech sector had already begun to unravel, and the structural problems that led to Enron and Worldcom and so forth were already in place. Maybe the shakeup in the financial sector, by wreaking so much devastation on the actual people who make up the financial sector helped speed along the popping of the tech bubble, but I don't really think it did. Airlines lost some money, but airlines were already hemorrhaging cash long before 9-11.

In both law enforcement and the economy, the 9-11 attacks may have slightly hastened trends that were already extant. But they didn't really manage to change anything, or start any trends. And, from an emotional point of view, well, America may well be big enough, diverse enough, and narcissistic enough that terrorism can't scar our collective psyche.

At least not from any one isolated incident, no matter how devastating.

See, I think that, were I in charge of al-Qaeda, I wouldn't have done this jet-liner thing. I would have done suicide bombings. 3,000 people in one day in two highly-visible locations is just not something that makes people change how they live their lives. If al-Qaeda had wanted to really hurt America, they would have taken the, what, four dozen people who hijacked the planes, and used them in four dozen different places, on four dozen different dates, in four dozen different shopping malls around the US. A suicide bombing or two a week for six or eight months, spread out around the entire country, would have had a far more devastating effect on morale, the economy, law enforcement, and the public psyche than what actually happened.

Maybe it's a good thing I'm not a terrorist. I'd be very good at it.

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I get "it's a good thing I'm not a < fill-in-the-blank >" times too. I don't post them anymore. I might give someone ideas.