There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.posted by sien at 11:08 PM on December 30, 2009 [2 favorites]
Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we're doing the terrorists' job for them.Terrorists can't destroy America. Only our reactions to terrorism can -- in our frenzy of fear, we ruin the things that made us great. There is simply no way that even ten thousand angry jihadis are even vaguely an existential threat, but losing the rule of law, and the rule of sense, most emphatically can and will destroy us.
"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.The largest actual threat this country has ever faced was the Soviet Union; a population of three hundred million people, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, capable of destroying every major city in the country within an hour. And we faced them down into ultimate defeat without leaving behind our principles.
It's pretty hard to find any part of the terrorism story that isn't suffused and tainted by partisan politics. But one example that keeps coming back to me is this example of the "backscatter" body scanners which would dramatically increase security but also, allegedly, create unacceptable intrusions into personal privacy.If we cared, we would be doing the body scans, But we don't care that much. It's just that some people are want to see people from Muslim countries put through extra security so that they, personally, don't have to get hassled. No inconvenience is too great for other kinds of people to deal with.
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but when it comes to submitting to a quick scan that might show a vague outline of boobs or penises (almost certainly no more than is exposed in most bathing suits), that's a bridge too far.
Something about that doesn't compute to me. And what I like about this is that there's no clear partisan division on this one. Everyone seems to agree. It just tells me that at some level we're not really serious about this.
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But it also strikes me that CNN, which is publishing this essay, is party to exactly the kind of fearmongering that the essay describes. Today, while I ate lunch with my parents in an Alabama restaurant, we saw on CNN a headline that read something like "POSSIBLE TERRORIST ATTACK IN TIMES SQUARE." Since I live in New York, I immediately pulled out my phone to check the news. The "possible terrorist attack"? An abandoned van.
No wonder it says at the bottom of the essay "The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bruce Schneier." They sure as hell don't seem to be shared by CNN.
posted by ocherdraco at 10:56 PM on December 30, 2009 [13 favorites]