I have said it once, I'll say it again. The only power that the terrorists have over us is the power that we give them. Bruce Scheier backs that point up in his latest blog post on the subjects of terrorism and anti-terrorism:
Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up 10 planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that's basically what's happening right now.
Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror.terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror.
After several years of fighting Islamic terrorism, the Bush Administration has failed to appreciate the fact that the two key players, Saudi Arabia and Iran, are still operating freely. In fact, it should have become increasingly clear that what we face is a proxy war, but that would require admitting that one of our "great allies," Saudi Arabia, has in fact been funding a global movement in a manner similar to how the Soviets funded international communism. The great coup for the enemy here has been that they have been able to mask their totalitarian agenda in a religion that is highly amenable to totalitarianism, allowing them to turn the whole politically correct culture back in on itself. Today, many are as afraid to say that Islam is a violent belief system as they are afraid of anti-terrorism efforts failing!
I think our enemies are quite aware of the inherent power of their approach, which has been demonstrated time and again in the ham-handed, illogical approaches to fighting terrorism. The American "can-do" attitude is being exploited by them because most Americans cannot stomach the reality that there is actually little that we can do to be safe other than to keep potential Islamic terrorists "over there." One would think that 9-11 would have been a wakeup call for the futility of trying to preemptively stop terrorism, due to the fact that they used box cutters to hijack planes and use them as missiles, but... that might be giving too much credit to those who don't deserve it.
I'll be the first to admit that my views on terrorism would be classified as *ahem* unconventional by most of what passes itself off as conservative today. I don't support the programs that cause us to spy on people, detain others indefinitely and things like that. I support mass deportations of foreign nationals from countries that produce these nutjobs. Why? It's the only effective, humane and constitutional rights-respecting way to fight against terrorism.
The most significant and complicated factor in terrorism is the fact that many "civilians" harbor sympathies toward it and there are many terrorists who double as "legitimate freedom fighters" from the perspective of their population. That's a problem because immigration from those populations means that even if you don't bring in terrorists, you may be bringing in foreign nationals who are sympathetic to them or whose views may create offspring who are. Spare me the thought police accusations on this. The last thing that any civilized country needs is to introduce people like this into its population. Immigration is at best a privilege, not a right.
Personally, I have no problem with Arabs, just Islam. If a Maronite or a Druze Arab lived next door to me, I wouldn't bat an eye at it because the thing that drove the 9-11 hijackers was their Islamic faith and some of its more violent teachings, not their Arabic cultural background.
I even freely acknowledge that there are many good people who practice Islam non-violently, but then these people are probably by nature not violent so violent teachings would be cheerfully ignored anyway. But how do we find these people at immigration and visa-granting time? That's the golden anti-terrorism question. All of the spy programs and data-mining applications in the world won't help if we allow a potential fifth column to be built up within our cities. We even still allow Wahabis, a violent death cult aimed at establishing a Taliban-like theocracy in America if there ever was one, to operate freely.
America is stuck in a very ugly place right now. We have to hurt our own people and many innocent Muslims to catch a sizable minority who sympathize with, help or are terrorists or we have to simply take little or no risk by deporting all foreign nationals from countries with serious Islamist activity. Collective judgement versus the risk of getting blown up, and some of those people getting blown up would, undoubtedly, end up being immigrants, Muslim or otherwise.
The enemy's terror war is a proxy war. Hezbollah has largely functioned as an auxiliary unit of Iran. They have been allowed to come here too. The rules haven't changed, we are still fighting nation states, but America does not have the will to actually invade a real terrorist sponsor like Iran or Saudi Arabia. I am not sure if it did even on the day after 9-11. The casualties would have been much higher, the occupation much more brutal and ultimately we would have needed what we have not had since Reagan: a leader who could unapologetically explain to the world why America needs to stick its boot hard up another country's ass in a way it won't forget for generations.
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